Early in his third term, Gov. John Kitzhaber created a powerful overarching education board that he pledged would forge dramatic improvements statewide. The panel would zero in on key strategies, break down the silos separating preschools, public schools and colleges and overhaul spending priorities to get the most vital results.
He put a host of influential Oregonians on the board, ranging from the teachers union president to a Nike executive. The governor himself was its chairman.
Four years later, the Oregon Legislature is days away from killing that board for good.
Gov. Kate Brown, Kitzhaber's successor, told The Oregonian/OregonLive she fully supports the move.
The panel, formally known as the Oregon Education Investment Board, lost its chief political backer when Kitzhaber resigned in disgrace in February. But the ease with which lawmakers have agreed to dismantle it reflects the widely shared view that the board did more wrong than right in its three-plus years of operation, in large part because of the way they say Kitzhaber guided it.
The former governor, contacted through his attorney, declined to comment for this article.
Kitzhaber's legacy
In his third term, Gov. John Kitzhaber set out to remake the education landscape, from preschool through college. He wanted to leave a legacy that would help generations of Oregonians attain higher levels of education.
The education board was a central component of a larger set of reforms that Kitzhaber successfully pushed in 2011 as part of his high-profile drive to upgrade Oregon's educational standing.
The former emergency room doctor did little on education during his first two terms, in the 1990s. But when he returned to office after an eight-year hiatus, he aimed for a new legacy: to remake Oregon's educational landscape with impressive results.
His call for coordinating statewide improvements among preschools, public schools and colleges will continue long after the board goes away.
That's because two other institutions that Kitzhaber created -- the job of Oregon chief education officer and a small 15-person agency behind it -- will live on. But their roles will be more circumscribed than the grandiose vision Kitzhaber set forth.
Nancy Golden, the former Springfield superintendent whom Kitzhaber selected for the chief education officer post, remains extremely popular. She says the new set-up will allow her and the agency to act with greater focus and effectiveness.
Nancy Golden, Oregon's chief education officer, will continue in that role, created by former Gov. John Kitzhaber. She is optimistic that changes to her role and that of the 15-person agency she heads will help her accelerate measurable improvements for Oregon students.
Kitzhaber's charge to Golden and the board was to fix all that is wrong with education in Oregon and determine how all education funding should best be spent. Now, she says, she and her staff will concentrate on smoothing students' entry to kindergarten, getting more students to graduate high school with the skills they need for college and improving students' transition into post-secondary education.
Her office also is charged with continuing its drumbeat to make the education system more effective for minority students, who trail white students by wide margins on every important metric, from kindergarten readiness to college graduation.
Golden calls the elimination of the board and diminished scope of her role "notable changes to really sharpen the charge of the agency." She predicts those changes will speed her ability to improve results for Oregon students.
Whether the agency, which will be renamed the Chief Education Office, will operate with the same level of transparency as the Oregon Education Investment Board is uncertain.
The new governor has agreed to use her executive authority to appoint a new advisory board to help guide Golden. Brown said in an interview this week that she has not decided whether to require the board to meet in public, notify the public of its meetings and make public all meeting materials.
"We are still working through the details," she said.
Kitzhaber's overarching board met monthly whereas the advisory panel Brown appoints will meet just a few times a year, officials say.
Brown canceled all scheduled meetings of the OEIB once she took office, so Golden has worked without board direction or oversight since January. Instead, she reports directly to Brown.
How the board lost popularity
Rudy Crew, named by John Kitzhaber to be Oregon's first chief education officer, was wildly unpopular when he left after 13 months on the job. His toxic reputation harmed some of Kitzhaber's reforms. A hiring committee including teachers union president Hanna Vaandering unanimously recommended that Kitzhaber hire Crew.
The current board was tainted by its affiliation with the inaugural chief education officer, Rudy Crew. A hard-charging, high-profile leader, he spent an outsized portion of his time traveling outside the state and was reviled by the time he quit after just 13 months.
The board also angered school districts by requiring them to submit detailed Achievement Compacts each year spelling out exactly which numeric targets they pledged to hit. That task was seen as duplicating existing accountability efforts, ill-tuned to school board calendars and ultimately pointless, given the board's lack of follow-through on monitoring results pledged or achieved.
Finally, Kitzhaber put the board through an exhausting effort to vet every proposed new initiative for Oregon education. The panel was told to whittle the list to those that would deliver the best returns, yet Kitzhaber insisted board members neither see nor talk about the price tags. Board members and education advocates alike fumed at what they considered a waste of energy with unclear results.
"That entire investment strategy ultimately did not make sense," said Chuck Bennett, lobbyist for the state school administrators association.
Yvonne Curtis, superintendent of Forest Grove schools, was one of many working educators on the Oregon Education Investment Board. Even she says the board should disband. "It works better when you lead through collaboration and relationship and inspiring people," Curtis says.
The board included five working educators, including two superintendents, a community college president and a professor, plus a recent teacher and two former members of the Portland school board. But it was widely perceived by the teachers union, school administrators and school board members as lacking touch with the realities on the front lines of Oregon's diverse school districts.
"The board didn't bring much of anything to the table," says Bennett, one of its harshest critics.
The Oregon Education Association, whose president Hanna Vaandering serves on the board, also is emphatic that the board should be abolished.
"There were things around the board that people weren't happy with," says Forest Grove Superintendent Yvonne Curtis, another member of the 13-person board. Killing off the powerful board that could impose requirements on schools and colleges will, in her view, help Golden and the agency get more accomplished, Curtis said.
"Most of the time it works better when you lead through collaboration and relationship and inspiring people," Curtis said.
Others say, however, that the board wasn't given enough time to show that it could have a positive impact, particularly given the upheaval the board and agency underwent with the abrupt departure of Crew, less than two years ago. Big changes in education take more than three years, they say.
Having a board of heavy hitters behind her helped give Golden and her agency more power, some board watchers say. Losing that could be a shame, particularly for minority and low-income students who don't have the same voice in politics as school administrators, the teachers union and other institutional powers, said Iris Maria Chavez, lobbyist for Stand for Children Oregon.
Starting fresh
Tim Nesbitt, former Kitzhaber education adviser and current Higher Education Coordinating Commission chair, says gaining Brown's strong backing and getting along with the Legislature is what matters most.
Gov. Kate Brown says improving education, from early childhood education to college affordability, is a top priority. She says Nancy Golden, chosen by former Gov. John Kitzhaber to be chief education officer, will have her unwavering support.
Brown says Golden and her agency will have her unwavering support.
"Education is a critical priority for me," Brown said. "It's critically important for Oregon's future and Oregon's future economy. ... What is important to me is to empower Nancy so that she has the tools she needs."
Brown, in her first interview on education policy, laid out some specific priorities. Getting students ready for kindergarten and reading well by third grade are extremely important, Brown said. So are raising high school graduation rates, expanding career-technical education and making college more affordable, she said.
Senate Education Chairman Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay, helped develop the plan to kill the education board and rein in the agency's role. Roblan emphasizes that the advisory board that Brown has pledged to appoint is a temporary fix. He said an entirely different board, or no board at all, could lie ahead.
A large group of lawmakers and education advocates will start meeting soon to discuss the role of the chief education officer and what is the right board, if any, to oversee her and her agency over the long haul, he said.
The group will make a recommendation to the 2016 Legislature, Roblan said, about what the permanent structure should be.
-- Betsy Hammond
503-294-7623; @chalkup