By Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle
SALEM, Ore. — There’s an ambitious effort underway at the Capitol to overhaul how the state determines funding levels for schools, but lawmakers are torn over the timing and larger questions about the goals of Oregon’s public education system.
Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, and Rep. Ricki Ruiz, D-Gresham, co-chairs of the six-member Joint Public Education Appropriation Committee, are spearheading the overhaul of Oregon’s school funding process, including what schools must demonstrate to receive funding.
On Thursday, the two shared with the committee a proposal that would entirely do away with Oregon’s 27-year-old Quality Education Model, the 11-member Quality Education Commission that produces recommended school funding levels every two years, and the education appropriation committee the two lawmakers lead. Lawmakers would have one month to debate and pass the bill that has generational impact during the legislative session beginning Feb. 2.
“I think the job of our committee is really to dig in and do a lot of this work and look at the issues,” Sollman explained, adding that Oregon’s system is outdated and that “no other state has a QEM-type model.”
Since 1999, the Quality Education Commission, staffed by the Oregon Department of Education, has researched best practices and determined how much money is needed for a successful public education system, with the main target of reaching a 90% statewide graduation rate. The commission gives its findings, presented as the Quality Education Model, to the education appropriation committee and governor every two years to guide budget decisions.
Notably, in the history of the model and commission, the Legislature has only fully funded schools to the recommended level once, when they passed in 2025 a record $11.4 billion for schools during the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years.
Under Sollman’s and Ruiz’s bill, the task of researching and determining how much money schools need would instead go to the Legislative Policy and Research Office, which would contract and work with a public or private firm that undertakes school finance analysis. As part of the analysis, researchers would have to hold panels with educators across the state about school needs.
The policy and research office would then present recommendations for school funding levels to the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee every eight years. During intervening two-year budget cycles, the Department of Administrative Services would adjust the recommended spending levels to account for inflation and other costs.
Split over standards
The bill would also modify what the state’s “quality goals for public education” are, Sollman and Ruiz explained to lawmakers. It would define a “standard school district,” able to receive state and federal funding, as one where all teachers are licensed.
Schools would be expected not just to meet a 90% graduation rate but to hit goals and standards established in a 2024 education accountability law. That law requires school districts to set goals with the Oregon Department of Education for improving third grade reading scores, eighth grade math scores, ninth grade on-track rates, four- and five-year graduation rates, and regular attendance rates.
But lawmakers said the state education department is still working out some of the goals and standards discussed in the education accountability bill and how they’ll be reported.
Rep. Emily McIntire, R-Eagle Point, said schools have been begging lawmakers to stop passing legislative changes that cost them more time and money in reporting.
“I think that our schools are saying, ‘please stop. Please leave us alone. Please don’t do anything else. Please halt.’ And this, to me, is such a ginormous change, especially when we don’t have the overhaul of (the 2024 law) done yet,” she said. “It feels like one of these things that we’re going to do, and then we’re going to find out what actually is required.”
Rep. Susan McLain, D-Forest Grove and a 40-year teacher who has played a large role in state education policy in the Legislature, told her colleagues on the committee that “there’s a lot in this bill that shocked me.”
The group had been discussing for years doing away with the old school funding model and the commission in charge of it, she said, but she was not prepared to completely change what schools have to demonstrate in order to receive funding.
“This bill is not just about doing away with the quality education model, or doing away with the appropriation committee. It also has to do with responsibilities for other parts of our system, and it has standards for other parts of our system,” she said.
Ruiz said enforcing more nuanced targets and standards that schools need to demonstrate in receiving funding would bring greater public trust in the schools and in the Legislature’s ability to ensure schools are improving and meeting the Legislature’s expectations.
“I’m just sick and tired that we put so much money into the education system and we’re seeing little to no progress,” Ruiz said.
The committee ultimately agreed to advance the bill and debate it during the legislative session.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a committee where I’ve had to say: ‘OK, I’m going to give a courtesy yes,’ and think, ‘Oh my gosh, what would happen if it passed?’ And that’s where I’m at,” McLain said.