US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan meets with CLASS Project educators to hear progress report on $24.4 million federal investment in Oregon teachers and students
CLASS receives Innovation in Education Award by Oregon Business Association
October 12, 2011 – Portland, OR – A group of Oregon educators today met with US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to share candid feedback of their experience with the CLASS Project and why it is transforming the teaching profession. CLASS (Creative Leadership Achieves Student Success) is an innovative education initiative led by Chalkboard Project to empower teachers and raise student achievement. Earlier this year, the federal government awarded $24.4M to seven Oregon school districts in partnership with Chalkboard to deepen their CLASS Project work.
Also today, CLASS received the inaugural Innovation in Education Award by the Oregon Business Association in front of 850 business, civic and education leaders attending the group’s annual Statesman Dinner.
“It doesn’t matter where in Oregon you live or your politics, we all want our kids surrounded by great teachers so they learn to be successful at whatever comes next,” said Chalkboard Project president Sue Hildick. “Chalkboard is helping 7,000 CLASS teachers across the state create what every professional deserves: a clear career path, effective support, expert training, and raises for great performance. The results we’re seeing in the classroom are extraordinary.”
CLASS, now in its fourth year, follows the same pioneering path that made Oregon a national leader with vote-by-mail, the bottle bill, and public beaches. It is a grassroots initiative led by teachers for teachers that includes collaboration between districts.
“Teachers have the single greatest in-school impact on a child’s education,” said US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “The CLASS Project is a tremendous example of the successful work that should be taken to scale, because students benefit when teachers work together to share best practices and learn from one another.”
“The CLASS Project is a great example of bringing educators, district leaders, and the education community together to improve student achievement,” said Oregon Business Association President Ryan Deckert.
“The CLASS project has become a source of empowerment for teachers,” said Karen Stiner, a mathematics teacher at High Desert Middle School in Bend. “It is giving us a new level of professional participation to shape our careers in ways which have the capacity to influence both teaching excellence and significantly increased levels of academic achievement for our students.”
According to Hildick, districts that have implemented CLASS for three years are making significantly greater gains in the share of students meeting and exceeding state benchmarks when compared to similar districts and the state.
“It is this type of transformation that can put Oregon’s public schools on a path to becoming among the best in the nation,” said Hildick.
About CLASS
Launched in the 2008-09 school year, CLASS is the largest initiative to come out of the Chalkboard Project, an independent non-profit dedicated to making Oregon’s K-12 public schools among the nation’s best. CLASS integrates expanded career paths, relevant professional development, meaningful performance evaluations, and new compensation models to give teachers the time and tools to stay at the leading edge of their craft. Each district’s CLASS Project design looks different because each district has different student and staff needs as determined by their teachers, administrators and school boards. There are nearly 130,000 students and 7,000 Oregon teachers in the 18 school districts participating in the CLASS Project today.
