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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, July 17, 2021
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
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OUR VIEW
Don’t throw out ‘essential skills’
T
he Oregon Legislature has
suspended through 2024
the requirement that stu-
dents show proficiency in read-
ing, writing and math — the aptly
named “essential skills” — as a
requirement for getting a high
school diploma.
Is the ability to apply those
skills no longer necessary in
everyday life? If so, we didn’t get
the memo.
Essential skills proficiency was
added as a requirement for gradu-
ation a decade ago.
Teaching kids to read and write
and do basic math was the whole
point of public education when
it came into existence. The pub-
lic school curriculum has become
more complicated over the years,
but has always been filled with
courses where students presum-
ably learned and used those skills.
But a lot of students were
graduating without the ability to
apply them in real-life situations.
Employers weren’t the only ones
to take notice, and the decision
was made to mandate proficiency
as a requirement for a diploma.
It does not seem too high of
an expectation after 12 years of
schooling.
School districts had various
options to test that proficiency.
But critics of the requirement
have called those tests into ques-
tion, alleging that they are unfair
to nonnative English speakers and
racial minorities.
Senate Bill 744 calls a halt to
the testing and the proficiency
requirement and orders the Ore-
gon Department of Education to
Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
Seaside High School graduates received their diplomas at the Turnaround in June.
evaluate graduation standards.
“The testing that we’ve been
doing in the past doesn’t tell us
what we want to know,” state
Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Port-
land, told KATU. “We have been
relying on tests that have been,
frankly, very flawed and rely-
ing too much on them so that
we aren’t really helping the stu-
dents or the teachers or the
community.”
We see nothing wrong with
evaluating and upgrading grad-
uation requirements. We are less
enthusiastic about, but not com-
pletely against, alternative eval-
uation methods for determining
proficiency.
But we agree with Republicans
in the Legislature who say the
state should not suspend the cur-
rent standard while this evalua-
tion takes place.
“The approach for Senate
Bill 744 is to, in fact, lower our
expectations for our kids,” said
House Minority Leader Chris-
tine Drazan, R-Canby. “This is
the wrong time to do that, when
we have had this year of social
isolation and lost learning. It’s
the wrong thing to do in this
moment.”
Our biggest fear is that the real
goal of SB 744 is to find more
ways to declare students profi-
cient without actually teaching
more students to be proficient.
Putting your boots in the oven
won’t make them biscuits, and
declaring a student proficient
through some convoluted evalua-
tion won’t make that so either.
The goal should be for every
student, regardless of race or eth-
nicity, to be proficient in the
essential skills, not to artificially
increase the graduation rates.
To demand less turns an Ore-
gon high school diploma into a
participation trophy. That would
truly be a disservice to the stu-
dents and to the community.
GUEST COLUMN
Project brings new hope for salmon
he Coquille and two tributaries,
Beaver Creek and China Camp
Creek, cross a huge flood plain or
delta about 20 miles inland from the Pacific
Ocean behind Coos Bay. To the common
eye, it looks like a green pasture with graz-
ing cows. In actuality, here is the largest
salmon restoration project in all of Oregon
and, possibly, along the entire West Coast.
And one of the great successes. Hope-
fully, some of these lessons and inspira-
tions might be shared on the
Columbia River and Wil-
lapa Bay.
The China Camp Creek
Project and Winter Lake
restoration is the dream-
child of Fred Messerle,
farmer, ex-county com-
DAVID
missioner and vision-
CAMPICHE
ary. But dreams are rarely
completed without effort,
and generally, not without a belly-full of
anxiety.
Messerle knows it all. He fought for
every inch of this refuge and field with
water arteries —canals and sloughs and
ditches — that encompasses 1,700 acres.
That’s a big chunk of wetland. Indeed, a
bigger-than-life dream.
Sometimes called “Winter Lake,” the
landscape leaps and sweeps into soft lav-
ender foothills and ignites our imagina-
tion. Messerle states that his family and
co-conspirators have “been at this for quite
a while.” In these parts, his family — farm-
ers, mostly — harken from the mid-19th
century. “Nature had it down,” admits Mes-
serle, “but for 110 years, we screwed it up.”
Messerle relocates his John Deer hat
over his brow and then further defines the
problem. “How,” he says, “do we now
design a system that duplicates nature?”
Salmon were once king in these coastal
rivers. But recent generations haven’t fared
so well.
The China Camp Creek Project aims to
change some of that. And if early success is
any indication, Messerle and friends are off
to a good start. The beauty of the project is
this: the field serves three uses, and each is
critical to the success of this young project
and of major benefit to the long-term revi-
talization of the Pacific salmon.
T
The World
The China Camp Creek Project is intended to improve salmon habitat.
As I mentioned, cattle graze here.
And salmon smolts grow into fingerlings
that are two times the average length and
weight of their upriver brethren. And the
waterfowl pour in. Sixty-percent of the
ducks and geese that travel twice a year
up and down the Oregon Coast settle onto
these fields — often as layovers — and
feed on the rich green grass. The salmon
smolts are content as well, devouring pro-
teins from decomposed salmon carcasses,
tiny shrimp and fish, as well as insects that
settle into these backwaters.
Hard-fought compromise seems to
please most of the partners in the Beaver
Slough Drainage District, and that com-
radeship pleases the state Department of
Fish and Wildlife and many other patrons
of this restoration. “Win-win when we can
work together,” repeats Messerle, chasing
that mantra like a trout surfacing for a fly.
Huge tide gates control the flood of
water, the bulk coming from the Coquille
but supplemented in the winter by heavy
rainfall. In the rainy season, when freshets
shape the landscape, the gates are closed,
and water floods the field. High water pro-
tects the salmon smolts just as it enhances
the rich green grasses that the waterfowl so
love. In the spring, after the salmon leave,
the cattle are released back onto the fields,
where they will fatten for months until they
are once again rounded up and shipped to
larger feeding lots in Yakima, Hermiston
and Moses Lake.
Everybody is happy. And if there was a
battle over the initial concept — the flood-
ing of all this land — most of the com-
plaints have bottomed out. But as any-
one knows, change never comes easily and
it can certainly whiplash as suddenly as a
winter freshet. Dreamers often dance on the
edge.
“Initially, people were worried about
breeding mosquitoes. They were worried
about flooding. They had considerations
about government intervention. Hell, some
thought they were facing Armageddon.
None of that came to be. And now we have
this,” Messerle said as he sweeps his strong
arms in a great circle and grins contentedly.
Messerle eyes the electrical gates.
Checks the control panels while com-
menting on the condition of the Northwest
salmon populations. “It’s sad,” he says.
“Doggone sad. What were unimaginable
runs of salmon have been diminished year
after year.”
“The hope,” he says, his leather-hard
face reflecting the yellow midday sun, “is
for more of this.” And as he talks, his farm-
er’s muscular arm lifts and points over
his recent creation, proudly, like an artist
reflecting on a masterpiece.
david Campiche is an avid chef and pot-
ter in Seaview, Washington.