By John A. Charles, Jr.
Fifteen years ago, the Portland Public Schools (PPS) district adopted a policy allowing students in the Jefferson High School boundaries to choose from one of three area high schools if they did not want to enroll at Jefferson.
Depending on their street address, families could choose to attend McDaniel in outer Northeast, Grant in the Alameda neighborhood, or Roosevelt in St. Johns. This was known as the “dual enrollment” policy.
For various reasons, of the 2,384 high schoolers who live in Jefferson boundaries, about 2,000 student families have opted for an alternative, leaving Jefferson with a declining enrollment of only 391 students this year (see May 29 Memo). The other three schools have enrollments over 1,400, with the Grant student body exceeding 2,100.
In a normal market economy, these trends would result in greater investment for the three schools with growing enrollment and fewer resources for the one with declining enrollment. But public schools are not part of the normal economy; they are government monopolies, supported by tax revenues rather than voluntary transactions.
Thus, the PPS board is pouring enormous amounts of money into Jefferson. Currently, the school receives more operating dollars per student than any other PPS high school, and nearly twice the per-student support given to Grant. (See PPS 25-26 Adopted Budget Vol. 2, pp. 4-5) Now, the district is about to start building a new 1,700-seat school for Jefferson students at a budgeted price of $466 million, making it one of the most expensive schools ever built in America.
Despite these expenditures, Jefferson students routinely rank among the highest rates of absenteeism and the lowest academic scores among PPS high schools.
None of this matters. From the perspective of PPS management, Jefferson must be prioritized regardless of cost or performance, because of its higher percentage (approximately 43 percent) of Black students.
To emphasize this point, on January 13 the PPS board passed Resolution 7228 to end the dual enrollment policy, effective September 2027. The board also established new school boundaries so that by 2030 Jefferson enrollment is predicted to be over 1,100, while Grant would lose between 750-900 students and a proportionate number of teachers.
Before the January 13 meeting, many families expressed concerns to the board about losing dual enrollment options, but their voice was never heard at the meeting. The board had already predetermined the outcome: if families would not choose Jefferson, then PPS would conscript them.
This decision is likely to backfire. Overall district enrollment has been declining since 2019 and is forecasted to drop by 15 percent over the next decade (from 43,375 in 2024-25 to 37,057 in 2034-35 per the Portland State University Population Research Center report). Repealing dual enrollment will accelerate that trend.
Parents always have other options, including private schools or moving to another public school district. They cannot be forced to attend a school that doesn’t meet their family’s or child’s needs simply because of a PPS edict or how it defines social equity.
School choice programs are growing exponentially across the country and PPS could have been part of that movement. Last summer Cascade suggested the Board consider expanding the dual enrollment policy for all students in the district. Not only would this empower more families, it would also incentivize employees at each school to perform at a higher level to maintain or increase enrollment.
This suggestion was ignored.
Sadly, Board members fail to understand the social determinants of academic achievement. In their decades-long effort to close the achievement gap between Black and White students, Board members have focused on bureaucratic structural solutions such as money, facilities, class size, and racial composition. But academic excellence is primarily driven not by buildings but by human factors beyond the district’s control such as family structure, parental oversight, student effort, and peer influence.
Now that the school board has eliminated dual enrollment for Jefferson, two-parent families with higher incomes are likely to exit the district, leaving behind more one-parent households with fewer resources.
Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers was one of the most successful head coaches in pro football for the past 19 years. When asked what he thought about a star player missing his training camp due to a contract dispute, he dismissed any concern by saying, “We’re looking for volunteers, not hostages.”
PPS is making a $500 million bet that taking hostages for Jefferson High School will pay off. The odds do not look favorable.
John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization. He researches, writes, and presents testimony and analysis on state and local issues important to the freedom and opportunity of all Oregonians.
