An ambitious effort to reshape the way Oregon calculates how much it needs to spend to produce a top-tier education system is on shaky ground in Salem, after key school lobbying groups lined up against it Tuesday.
Senate Bill 1555, a proposal from Sen. Janeen Sollman of Hillsboro and Rep. Ricki Ruiz of Gresham, both Democrats, would eliminate the state’s 27-year-old “quality education model” and instead task a nonpartisan research group with crafting a new cost model that makes more room for the different needs of urban and rural schools and expands the goals districts are tasked with meeting.
The two lawmakers have said such changes, pegged to national best practices, are both long overdue and a needed reset to perennial chicken-and-egg conversations that swirl around school funding and Oregon’s bottom-of-the-national-barrel academic outcomes…