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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 14, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, October 14, 2017 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW The value of showing up It has been another week of we can do better. distressing news for an Oregon Because what good are these education system that continues to tiny data points until we have a rank among the worst in the country. larger set? And will we ever have a Administration after administration, large enough set if we continue to from state government all the way change how and why we test our down to local school districts, have young people? It’s like measuring a promised reforms and improvement. baseball player on their first few at Yet new initiatives, new tests to bats, when it’s only after seasons (or measure progress, a whole career) that new management, we can accurately new programs In Oregon, only measure their true and new funding and ability. 67.3 percent of value sources are always It can be stymied — they lack to K-12 students discouraging follow-through and watch the continual are classified soon enough Oregon revolving door of education is back upper management. as “regular where it started, It can be equally though pointed attenders” — an discouraging to get down a different in the minutiae abysmally low lost shady path. of statistics. But the one thing On Wednesday, percentage. we’re continually Oregon’s chief reminded of state schools officer Salam Noor resigned under pressure when we discuss education is the importance of showing up. Of from Governor Kate Brown. That’s attending class. Of missing as little the same governor who handpicked time as possible, of not falling Noor to oversee the state’s K-12 behind. schools little more than two years The state defines “regular ago. According to the governor’s attenders” as students who attend at press secretary, Brown said she least 90 percent of the school year. was no longer satisfied with Noor’s Statistics show that students who ability to execute her vision. So back to square one for Oregon fall below that mark test well below those who show up reliably. education. Back to the back of the Yet in Pendleton only 76. 2 pack. percent of students classify as From a local perspective, school districts received their “report cards” regular attenders. It’s worse in Hermiston — only 71.1 percent on Thursday and they were mixed attend at least 90 percent of class bags. Far from straight As, but far time. And statewide Oregon students from failing grades as well. attend an abysmal 67.3 percent of We spotlighted the results from the time. the Hermiston and Pendleton That’s not good enough. So much districts, and what is most of the education system can seem compelling is the fact that teachers bureaucratic, generic and random and administrators are hard pressed — the success of our children and to put their finger on why a certain loved ones are out of our hands once statistic improved or why another we’ve taught them to read and write, dipped. think and count. And that’s understandable. But the best thing we can do Anyone who has spent any time to get them through school is to in a classroom knows that each get them to school. Accept only is different, as is each and every legitimate excuses — contagious student who comprises them. illness the obvious one. Get your kid It makes sense that the numbers fluctuate, and it will take many years to class and the state’s statistics, and our community as a whole, will no and many thoughtful studies to drill doubt improve. Perhaps the statistics down to what (if any) progress is will even bear it out. being made in our schools and how Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. YOUR VIEWS Walden siding with utility companies and against fish Columbia River salmon and steelhead are facing urgent challenges to avoid extinction. Last summer the U.S. District Court determined that the plan that dam operators currently follow on the Columbia and Snake rivers is illegal and does not protect salmon and steelhead from extinction. The court ordered the operators and scientists to come up with a more effective plan by 2021. A second court finding said the current plan will do “irreparable harm” to fish that are already facing extinction so they ordered the agency scientists to come up with an immediate short-term plan to spill more water over the dams starting in 2018 to protect these fish from extinction. However, HR 3144 was introduced into the legislature this summer and seeks to overturn both of these court orders and lock in the current “status quo” operations. Furthermore, it seeks to eliminate the required analysis of management options. Guess who is one of the co-sponsors of this bill? Yep, our U.S. Representative Greg Walden. The same Walden that received $146,000 from the electric utilities industry in the last election cycle. So, if you enjoy fishing for salmon and steelhead or you just value their existence as part of our Pacific Northwest heritage, recognize that Walden’s proposed bill will allow these fish to continue their path towards extinction. The challenges of preserving salmon in the Columbia River involve many aspects, both in the rivers and in the oceans. How we meet these challenges should be determined by those that understand the science involved, not by a politician who is lobbied by the utility companies to keep things as they are. Things “as they are” are not going to preserve our salmon. Consider that when Walden asks for your vote in 2018. OTHER VIEWS We used to build things T hey say that fighting a wildfire the University of Pennsylvania, is the closest thing to being in the Philadelphia Fire Department, combat. The trees explode, the The Pennsylvania Gazette, The wind whips down while the oxygen American Philosophical Society, the disappears and the fire “sheets” along Pennsylvania Hospital and much else. the ground, streaking sideways like In the 1930s, the alphabet soup of New Deal agencies were created. The rushing waters. late 1940s saw the creation of the big Today’s California fires remind me multinational institutions: the United of the largest fire in U.S. history, the David Big Burn of 1910, which destroyed 3 Brooks Nations, NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the million acres in Idaho, Montana and Comment beginnings of the European market. Washington. One of the towns the fire When you look around today, you destroyed was Wallace, Idaho. A lone see a lot of history-making new companies train arrived to take people away, and panic being created, but you don’t see too many ensued. As my New York Times colleague big civic organizations. There are some great Timothy Egan describes in “The Big Burn,” social entrepreneurs, like Bill Drayton, who his history of the fire, men yanked women out of their seats, taking their place. started Ashoka, but the only vast national civic The U.S. Forest Service had been created movements I can think of are the charter school five years before by President Theodore movement and the tea party. Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. The 10,000 We’ve got just as many problems as men who were rounded up previous generations to fight the fire were led faced — as many as in the by a small group of young progressive era, I’d say. Why foresters, many of them from has there been this decline in the Yale School of Forestry, civic institution building? which graduated its first Political polarization has class in 1904. got to be a big culprit. The One of the foresters, federal government can’t though decidedly no Yalie, build anything new, even was Ed Pulaski. By the time something as obvious as a the fire hit Wallace, Pulaski national service program. had been up in the mountains The churches have let us fighting fires for a month. He down, too. The Christian came down to get food for churches have been behind his men. “Wallace will surely most of the big social burn,” he told his wife and movements in U.S. history, 10-year-old daughter, before returning up the such as abolition, poverty programs and civil mountain to care for his fighters. “I may never rights. But for the past generation, the church see you again.” has been fighting a defensive war against the Pulaski and his men were soon surrounded sexual revolution, not an offensive assault for by flame. Hand on his gun, he forced them opportunity and human dignity. to lay face down in the mud of an abandoned The affluent have also been less mine tunnel. He covered the small entrance entrepreneurial. Many civic institutions in past with a wet cloth to try to prevent the air from decades were created by people like Roosevelt being sucked out by the inferno. and Pinchot, who inherited family empires but Soon, his face caught fire and he collapsed. devoted their lives to civic institution building. After five hours in what they assumed would But I wonder if there is also a malaise, be their coffin, the men stirred. Forty-one were a loss of faith in the future and a loss of still alive, with only five dead. expertise in institution building, a sense of Pulaski never received a cent from the general fragmentation and isolation. U.S. government for his heroism. But Pinchot used foreign policy, which used to be about building the fire to tell the story of the Forest Service, positive coalitions to make life better, now the small band of underfunded heroes who seems to be based on the idea that we should risked their lives to save others. The fire turned defensively withdraw from things. There has out to be the making of that new and embattled been a loss of civic imagination. agency. The good news is that one could When you look back at that era, you are have said the same thing in 1890, when struck by how many civic institutions were politics was steeped in corruption and the founded to address the nation’s problems. Not economy wracked by crisis. But by 1910 only the Forest Service, but also the Food and the landscape was transformed. There were Drug Administration, the municipal reform new organizations, new movements, a new movement, the suffrage movement, the Federal mentality and a new burst of optimism. Reserve System, the Boy Scouts, the 4-H Even the worst fires clear the way for new clubs, the settlement house movement, the growth. compulsory schooling movement, and on and ■ on. Four amendments to the Constitution were David Brooks became a New York Times passed in those years. Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He In fact, when you look back on most has been a senior editor at The Weekly periods of U.S. history, you see a rash of Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek new organizations being created. In the 18th and the Atlantic Monthly, and is currently a century, Benjamin Franklin helped build commentator on PBS. Hand on his gun, he forced them to lay face down in the mud of an abandoned mine tunnel. John Schwartz The Dalles LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
