Amen and amen!

From "Letters to the Editor", The Oregonian, February 16:

Funding education

Oregon chief education officer Rudy Crew wants to "fix" our schools by changing their "educational architecture" and buying a lot of new technology ("Call for new 'educational architecture' in Oregon," Feb. 11).

Our present model doesn't serve students well, he says, completely ignoring the effects of years of inadequate funding on the schools we have. Remember the state's Quality Education Model? In every biennium, the gap between what the QEM has established as resources needed and actual funding has grown. That gap was $1.64 billion in 2007-9 and is projected to be $2.44 billion in 2013-15. This reminds me of G.K. Chesterton's words: "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."

In Oregon, stable, adequate and equitable funding has been found difficult and not tried. Instead, our leaders continue to take resources out of classrooms, spending scarce education dollars on bureaucracy, consultants, testing and expensive technology. Let's focus on the basics: students and teachers working together in schools that are supported with the wherewithal for learning.

Until we try appropriately funded schools, we won't know how effective they can be.

WENDY SWANSON 
Southwest Portland  
Swanson is an education instructor at Portland State University and has 31 years of elementary teaching experience in Oregon.