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BEND-LA PINE SCHOOLS
Unique
grading
style could
point to
the future
The Bulletin and Scalehouse team up to help the arts community
Central Oregon Creative
Artists Relief Effort
System stresses learning
concepts and improving all year
Help support musicians, performers and others through new campaign
BY JACKSON HOGAN
The Bulletin
At Cascade Middle School, homework
isn’t graded. Extra credit isn’t offered. And
students don’t get their grades inflated just
because they’re behaving well.
Cascade staff say their unique grad-
ing system rewards students for actually
learning concepts and improving through-
out the school year, rather than “playing
school” correctly.
“We’re here to develop a genuine love
for learning, and develop life long learners,”
said Dave McKae, a math teacher at Cas-
cade Middle School. “I think this system
helps develop that mindset.”
Bend-La Pine Schools recently began
an 18-month journey to rethink its grad-
ing policies for middle and high schools
and this grading style — dubbed stan-
dards-based grading — could point to-
ward the future. Three other Bend schools
— Pilot Butte Middle School and the two
Realms magnet schools — have similar
policies.
But the district still has a ways to go be-
fore any districtwide grading changes are
made, said Katie Legace, director of high
schools for Bend-La Pine.
“We want to ensure we have an oppor-
tunity for every teacher to do some think-
ing about their grading practices,” she said.
“But we don’t have any preconceived idea
about where we might end up at the end of
18 months.”
At Cascade, where standards-based
grading has been in place since 2016, stu-
dents are graded on a 1-4 scale.
A 1 represents a beginning level of mas-
tering the concept, and a 4 means the stu-
dent has advanced knowledge of the con-
cept. These numbers are then converted
into traditional letter grades like As and
Bs.
When students start a class, they’re
given a detailed description of exactly
what they must do to earn a 4, a 3, a 2, or
a 1. Pilot Butte Middle teachers grade on a
0 through 8 scale, to better align with the
International Baccalaureate curriculum the
school uses.
This eliminates inconsistencies among
different teachers’ grading styles, said Ste-
phen DuVal, Cascade Middle School prin-
cipal.
“If you have two teachers that teach the
same subject at the same grade level, can
the same student get the same grade?” he
said. “We found there was a little more in-
consistency than we would’ve liked (before
standards-based grading).”
BY BRIAN MCELHINEY • The Bulletin
ichard Schuurman knows how hard it is to make
a living as a musician. His younger brother, Eric,
carved out a career as an independent musician.
“For many years he did make a living (with
music), and then like so many others, you have to do
course corrections in certain ways that still keep you con-
nected to the music field, but maybe not in the way that
you initially would have hoped,” Schuurman said. “...
When the Great Recession of a few years back (hit), it was
such that he had to make a complete course correction —
not a course correction, but a change. And then he was
able to get back into music and I saw just how influential
that was again in his life, so that to me as much as anything
really influenced me.”
Schuurman, husband of The Bulletin Publisher Heidi
Wright, is a lifelong music fan as well. Last summer he
and Wright caught a socially distanced show by local
singer-songwriter Pete Kartsounes at CHOW. He was
immediately struck by how good the performance was,
and following a conversation with Kartsounes, how much
Kartsounes and other artists were struggling to stay afloat
during the pandemic.
R
See Arts / A10
To make a donation or apply for a grant:
bendbulletin.com/talent
PICTURED FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: Lisa Dae, local jazz singer;
Mehama Kaupp, owner of a burlesque entertainment company;
Ian Factor, Bend artist and teacher; Jason Graham (Mosley Wotta),
Bend’s creative laureate; and Eric Leadbetter, local musician.
See Grading / A10
Facing the elephant in the room: A fractious Oregon GOP
When Vic Atiyeh was in the last year of his
life, he was happy to accept an accolade from a
former aide calling him “Oregon’s last great gov-
ernor.”
But as his personal archive was opened in
2013 at Pacific University — where he had been a
trustee — Atiyeh also said he did not want his leg-
acy to be the last Republican governor of Oregon.
Yet voters have elected only Democrats to
the governor’s office since Atiyeh, formerly a
state legislator from Beaverton and a business-
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Page B6
man in Portland.
It’s the longest streak for either major party in
Oregon history.
Republicans dominated statewide offices
when Atiyeh was governor 40 years ago. They
were led by Oregon’s U.S. senators of that era —
Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood, each with
five victories — but also the secretary of state,
state treasurer and attorney general, even though
Democrats controlled the Legislature.
Republicans have become a threatened spe-
cies at the statewide level. Just two Republicans
have been elected to statewide office in the past
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A2, A11
two decades.
Their ranks are shrinking further.
Knute Buehler once carried the GOP banner in
Oregon. Now he’s left the party.
In November, Democratic presidential nominee
Joe Biden won the race for the White House, un-
seating one-term incumbent Republican Donald
Trump. The win was certified and recertified after
several statewide recounts, and was acknowledged
by states’ elections officials, governors, secretaries
of state, the U.S. Justice Department, an estimated
60 judges in about 100 lawsuits — often dismissed
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because of a lack of evidence — and the Republi-
can-controlled U.S. Senate.
But then came Jan. 6, when supporters of
President Trump listened to several stirring
speeches, then marched on the U.S. Capitol and
invaded it by force, in an effort to overturn the
will of the voters. Five people died. Many of the
attackers used social media to brag about the in-
cursion — in real time — while security cameras
and the Washington press corps caught count-
less photos and videos of the effort to overthrow
the election.
See Oregon GOP / A6
The Bulletin
ù
An Independent Newspaper
We use
recycled
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Vol. 119, No. 57, 30 pages, 4 sections
SUN/THU
BY PETER WONG
Oregon Capital Bureau
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