Portland doesn’t need to apologize for spending more than $1.5 billion on a 7-mile light-rail line, says Secretary of Immobility Anthony Foxx. “Cities, counties and state need to have bold visions, not be unapologetic about them, and explain them to the public,” he was quoted as saying. Presumably this quote was garbled; otherwise the Department of Transportation is in even worse trouble than the Antiplanner thought.
Let’s see how well Portland is doing as a model for the nation:
- Its streets are falling apart even as it plans to build 140 miles of streetcar lines at a cost that would be enough to repave all 5,000 miles of streets;
- Portland doesn’t even have enough money to maintain city-owned office buildings;
- The general manager of Portland’s transit agency says it will have to reduce all rail and bus service by 70 percent between now and 2025 in order to meet all of its financial obligations;
- Despite all the money spent on Portland transit, transit is so unpopular that, of 50,000 new workers gained between 2005 and 2012, fewer than 100 take transit to work;
- For the Portland urban area as a whole, there were 124,000 new jobs between 2005 and 2012, of which about 700 took transit to work.
- Thanks partly to money stolen from schools by TIF-addicted planners intent on subsidizing TODs, Portland high schools have some of the largest classroom sizes and lowest graduation rates in the nation;
- The “creative class” of young people who have been attracted to Portland (most likely by the city’s 50 brew pubs) do so little work that they have reduced Portland’s per capita incomes, relative to the rest of the country, by 10 percent;
- Portland has funded only half of its pension obligations and just 4 percent of its health-care obligations, giving it one of the worst records of any city in the nation.
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Sounds like a model for other cities of what not to do.
More reasons for the sane to vacate Stumptown.
“Thanks partly to money stolen from schools by TIF-addicted planners intent on subsidizing TODs, Portland high schools have some of the largest classroom sizes and lowest graduation rates in the nation”
Except that Portland’s graduation rates have increased since 2009. And dropout rates were much higher in the 1990s. Can you provide evidence that:
1. PPS budgets have decreased over time
2. The percent of school budgets diverted to TIF
3. That PPS low graduation rate is directly related to spending
4. Funding directly affects dropout rates
Half of Oregon’s budget goes to schools. How much more do they need?
Maybe money isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s the broken and archaic school system that forces students to learn things that aren’t relevant their financial success and in which they have absolutely no interest.
“Maybe it’s the broken and archaic school system that forces students to learn things that aren’t relevant their financial success and in which they have absolutely no interest.”
It is the same school system that teaches them that to spend 51 million per rider on light rail is cheaper than buses or cars. Because everything they learn (math, science, economics, history, etc.) is to be based upon global warming.
Wasn’t it in CO that students protested the ultra statist new curiculum that promotes jingoism and disparages civil disobedience? Didn’t Thoreau advocate civil disobedience?
Teens giving the big middle finger to the government propganda machine by dropping out should be viewed as a positive. A PPS diploma isn’t worth the toilet paper I use to wipe my ass.
How the AP can support govt propaganda re-educating centers is beyond me. Forcing non-reproducers to re-program reproducers’ offspring in govt detention centers smacks of subsidy.
Portland has a national cred as vibrant and creative and cycling and transit, not for having good schools or streets. Schools and safe streets and retired people are for the suburbs, not a vibrant urban core of creative people. Best to plan to keep the streets and schools run down so that Portland remains creative and vibrant.
If I keep saying Portland is creative and vibrant, will it make up for bad schools for the rugrats?
“Portland has a national cred …not for having good schools… [Good] Schools … are for the suburbs”
Having taught in both PPS and the suburbs, I can tell you that there is no significant difference between districts.
Not only can I tell you, I can back up my assertion with facts:
2013 on-time graduation rates for Portland/East County’s other districts:
Portland Public: 67%
Reynolds: 55%
Gresham-Barlow: 72%
David Douglas: 71%
Centennial: 65%
Park Rose: 60%
Yes, some suburban government schools, not listed here, are doing slightly better. But government schools’ overall suckage is independent of the urban/suburban divide.
So Frank ALL Oregon School Districts are CRAP? Are they all filled with teachers who excelled in school as students, and came back to perpetuate their narrow minded views of how learning should be, versus how children actually learn? That seems to be our current experience with Portland Public Schools. It’s much better than when I attended, BUT now that the Federal Government, and State of Oregon are providing the funding, the schools don’t seem to be serving the consumers of education, you know the students, and since their are few jobs available after graduation there is little variety to be able to choose from. Oregon education is an example of the mediocrity being pursued here, and maybe everywhere. All I know is that the quality of teaching was higher quality when we attended private K-8 school, then what we are experiencing at public PPS High School.