Eugene weekly., April 17, 2014, Page 4, Image 4

LET TERS
THE COUNCIL’S INTENT
It has not been a longstanding intention
of the City Council to close Whoville before
April 15 or even by April 15. The following
statements were made on Feb. 18:
“Our intent is not to just to go in and
shut down the site, our intent is to provide
time for people to transition to whatever
site that Council chooses, and so that is
what our intent is as we go forward.” —
Jon Ruiz, city manager.
“I am very glad to hear the city manager
state very clearly the intention to fi nd a new
location and to invite folks at Whoville to
relocate there. I think that speaks to the
intent of the motion that I proposed and
that this council passed.” — Claire Syrett,
city councilor.
“Yes, I concur that our intention was to
have a place to go before Whoville shuts
down … with regard to other sites and
collaborations.” — Alan Zelenka, city
councilor.
The motion to have Whoville closed
down by April 15 was made on March
10 by Greg Evans. I am giving Evans the
benefi t of the doubt about why he made
that motion and hoping he made it to
inspire urgency on the part of the council
to fi nd an alternate site. Unfortunately, it
inspired our military-minded city manager
to create an unnecessary and obscenely
expensive show of force at Whoville —
another uneven battle in the war against
the poor.
Vickie Nelson
Eugene
HOUSING FIRST
Dear Congressman Peter DeFazio:
Please read this article on a homeless
solution in the Metro News of Vancouver,
B.C.: wkly.ws/1q4.
Everyone should see this and hope
everyone can be housed. It saves money to
house people. With a secure place to live
they become better citizens!
Who ever decided that millions of
Americans should be without income and
homeless? Eugene needs emergency help
with the thousands who are homeless.
RECLAIMING PUBLIC EDUCATION
SNAP (Supplemental
Nutritional
Assistance Program) has statistics on
zero incomes, incomes less than $350 a
month, and it even attempts to number the
homeless. These numbers are much larger
than are reported elsewhere.
Lane County, which is Oregon’s
Department of Human Services//SNAP
District 5, should report to you each month
its hidden statistics. Tens of thousands of
your constituents in Lane County are in
great trouble. All shelter programs have
huge waiting lists. Lots of our citizens are
outside, hiding from local police.
Jerry Smith, MSW
Eugene
RIVER LESSONS
Thanks to professor Jim Earl for his
eloquent prose in praise of a walk in
the park. And thanks to EW’s editor for
knowing great writing when he sees it and
sharing it with the rest of us students of
nature.
I particularly enjoyed studying Earl’s
four conclusions and wholeheartedly agree
with three of them: Nature is perfect;
it couldn’t care less about us; we love it
anyway. In any world, these three things
characterize a fi ne romance. But his fi rst
conclusion, that “Unlike the human world,
Nature has no thoughts, intentions or
desires; it just is,” gave me pause and made
me think.
Certainly it is true that Nature, like
Frank Baum’s Scarecrow character, doesn’t
have a brain (ergo no thoughts — at least
not without magic). But it seems to me
that intentions and desires are evolutionary
traits shared by us all. Look again at those
old cottonwoods that have weathered the
storms all these years. Couldn’t their bark
manifest an intention to survive, their
leaves a desire to continue?
I agree with Earl that Nature is what
it is. But I also agree with Bill Clinton,
who argued that “It depends on what the
defi nition of 'is' is.” Humans and Nature —
what’s the diff? We’re all made of the same
stuff. That is what it is to me. If we could
BY C AL EB MCK ENZIE
Can We Trust Common Core?
CORPORATIONS, NOT EDUCATORS, ARE BEHIND THE STANDARDS
P
arents want to trust the schools where
they send their children. Teachers,
like myself, want to trust the learning
criteria set before us by the state. And
I believe most of us want to trust our
government to make the best decisions possible for
the children of our nation. The problem in trusting
the newly implemented Common Core Standards
and Assessments is that there are too many
unanswered questions for it to feel safe on any of
these levels. By themselves, standards are great
and teachers strive to reach them. Unfortunately,
many problems are introduced when working with
the standards and assessments contained in the
Common Core. Here are three questions that come
to mind about Common Core in our schools.
• The fi rst is: who created it? As far as I can
tell, it was designed behind closed doors by a
group of 27 people, made up almost entirely of
non-educators. The diffi culty in trusting this is: If
Common Core is going to affect the testing and
learning climate of our entire nation, why weren’t
more educators involved in its creation? Most of
us wouldn’t ask a lawyer to design our house, or
a politician to perform our surgeries. Why, then,
weren’t more professional educators part of an
open creation process? And, more importantly,
why is this system now being mandated as the
driving force of student education?
• Next question. What are the Common Core
Assessments designed to do? Everyone knows
assessment is essential in schools. When students understand key concepts, teachers
move on. If students have diffi culties, teachers slow down to focus on specifi c areas.
As teachers, we use a variety of assessments to help shape every lesson. When looking
at how Common Core assesses student achievement, the complex tests don’t seem to
be a valid measuring stick for the job. New York started Common Core earlier than
other states and found that not only did their passing rates drop by 30 percent, but
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less than a third of students could even pass. So, at
the end of the school year, what will these failure
rates prove? We know the scores are aimed to
evaluate teacher and school performance. Will this
test data be considered solid proof of inept teachers
and feeble public schools? Will it create initiatives
to shut down schools in poor neighborhoods? And,
how are students going to feel about their ability
when it’s so diffi cult to succeed? Will failure and
mandatory remedial classes motivate students to
try harder on a test that, to many of them, seems
impossible?
• The third question, though defi nitely not the
fi nal one, is: Why is Common Core linked to so
many multi-billion dollar corporations? After some
digging, I found it’s being pushed forward by both
the Gates and Walmart Foundations, Boeing, Ford
and Nationwide, just to name a few. It’s pleasant
to imagine Common Core being funded out of
the goodness of the corporate heart, but common
sense tells us that that’s probably not the case.
So why the aggressive corporate boost? What do
they stand to gain? Could shoddy test scores lead
to public school shutdowns, paving the way for
the privatization of America’s schools? Will we
soon send our children off to Walmart High, or
Nationwide Insurance Elementary? And why are
many of these corporations affi liated with agencies
like Broad, who spend millions to destroy school
boards and teachers’ unions? One thing is certain:
There are billions of dollars in America’s public
school system that, for the time being, are out of reach from these corporate giants.
Unfortunately, I have few answers to these questions, and the more I learn about
Common Core, the more questions I have. Every system has room for improvement,
including public education. As a teacher of 10 years though, I can say there are too
many ifs in the Common Core to trust it achieving anything but more problems.
Caleb McKenzie is a fi fth grade teacher in the Bethel School District. He has enjoyed teaching for 10 years.