A4
Opinion
wallowa.com
September 21, 2016
Wallowa County Chieftain
Higher
standard
needed for
education
T
he Oregon Department of Education should do
more to address the concerns of educators and
parents about Smarter Balanced testing and
Common Core state standards.
At least that’s what the Oregon Secretary of State
argued Sept. 14 in releasing the results of a mandated
state audit.
Jeanne Atkins reported there were problems with
the test rollout and results, and ODE has not done a
good enough job communicating the need for the test.
And, Atkins said, it needs to better administer Smarter
Balanced and address legitimate concerns about
standardized testing in general.
“It is apparent that
there is not a clear
understanding about the
test’s purpose and that
administering the test is The East Oregonian
presenting challenges
to some schools,” wrote
Atkins.
Much of the audit’s results are lost in education-
speak gobbledygook, and Atkins expressed hand-
wringing worries that Smarter Balanced can cause
students to “experience additional stress and that could
negatively impact their self-esteem.”
That’s pretty high irony for a state that is among the
lowest in the country for graduation rates. If anyone
should have low self-esteem, it’s Oregon Department
of Education and state legislators, who run and fund
our well-below-average education system.
We’re not strongly for or against Common Core,
and we understand the need for testing while also
understanding that hundreds of other skills need to
be taught each school year. And we know Oregon
has among the fewest hours of classroom time in the
country, so we can’t be setting aside too many of those
hours to meet arbitrary federal requirements.
But the deeper problem is an inability to stick with
any speciic standard. That means we have not allowed
students and teachers to understand what is expected
of them, and allow them to learn from mistakes and
improve. We’ve bounced students between too many
state and federal guidelines, from No Child Left
Behind to Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and
Skills (OAKS) to Common Core. No wonder scores
are low — children are being taught differently every
few years, with different end goals in mind each time.
Teachers face the same churn, spending time learning
what new tests will require instead of how to better
educate their students.
Another real problem is creating patently unrealistic
standards, whether from NCLB or Oregon’s once-
touted, now-derided 40-40-20 plan.
There are problems with standardized testing and
there are problems with coddling our students, not
allowing them to be pushed and even to fail.
We must ind a middle ground. Children need to be
both supported and challenged in the classroom. And
we cannot hide them or us from the hard truths — that
America is falling behind its global competitors in
education, and that Oregon is among the bottom of the
barrel in this country.
EDITORIAL
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P.O. Box 338 • Enterprise, OR 97828
Ofice: 209 NW First St., Enterprise, Ore.
Phone: 541-426-4567 • Fax: 541-426-3921
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MAIN STREET
Rich Wandschneider
It’s easy in this lush Wallowa Valley to
take water for granted, although murmurs
from California exiles and smoke from
miles-away forest ires are troubling.
This gathering of Indian peoples should
be just as troubling.
It has to do with an attitude that nat-
ural resources are basically inexhaust-
ible, and that, even as we run out of one,
another resource or another technology
will rise to take its place. Indians are
telling us that water is the fundamental
resource, and that the beaver and salmon
that were taken almost to extinction by
the fur trade and Columbia River can-
neries in the 1800s were indicators of a
fundamentally lawed economy.
Beaver had been exhausted in Europe
when that business marched across the
middle of North America from the 1600s
into the 19th century. In a dispute over the
“jointly occupied” Oregon Territory, the
British set out to trap out all of the bea-
ver in the Columbia watersheds, thinking
that this would dissuade American trap-
pers and immigrants from occupying it.
Eventually, silk or some other commodi-
ty replaced beaver felt for hats, the crisis
was averted and Americans found other
reasons to settle the Northwest.
In the irst Alaskan oil rush, American
whalers, who had depleted sperm whales
in the Paciic Ocean, killed over 13,000
bowhead whales north of the Bearing
Strait in just two decades in the mid
1800s. Needless to say, Inupiat culture,
which had revolved around whaling for
millennia, was severely damaged. Survi-
vors are now rearranging lives around the
21st-century oil business, adapting while
trying to hold onto vestiges of sea cul-
ture threatened by oil spills and warming
and rising oceans. It’s the water.
Our economy seems based on the
consumption of whatever resource is
readily available in the moment, trusting
that science and capitalist good sense
will discover and exploit the next re-
source.
See WATER, Page A5
Rentals issue puts democracy
in action along the coast
Regulations surrounding short-term
rentals continue to be a divisive issue on
the North Coast.
Two weeks ago, the Gearhart City
Council unanimously adopted an ordi-
nance that contains new rules to regulate
short-term rentals. The ordinance was
several years in the making with public
hearings that illed meeting rooms and
divided the community. Even after the
new ordinance was adopted, a portion of
the Gearhart community remains divid-
ed and plans to push for an initiative that
will supersede the new rules.
Farther south, in Cannon Beach, the
City Council hopes to make its short-
term rental regulations more “clear and
understandable” and is working on new
code amendments to streamline the pro-
cess. Part of that proposed streamlining
would make short-term rental permits
more similar to business license applica-
tions instead of planning or zoning deci-
sions, a move that would shift review of
permit applications from the city’s Plan-
ning Commission to the City Council. It
would also shift appeals from the Land
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Contents copyright © 2016. All rights reserved. Reproduction
without permission is prohibited.
Volume 134
I’ve been following the protest in
North Dakota over the pipeline, watch-
ing it swell with tribal people from
across the country. The New York Times
says that members from over 280 tribes
are now involved. Some are coming in
caravans, some by plane and foot. Some
Northwesterners made their inal miles
in large, brilliant canoes.
The Times proiled a few of the pro-
testers. Thayliah Henry-Suppah, Paiute,
of Oregon, wearing a traditional wing
dress with ribbons and otter furs, said
she kept this Indian proverb in mind:
“Treat the earth well. It was not given
to you by your parents. It was loaned to
you by your children.” In her own words:
“We’ve lived without money. We can live
without oil, but no human being can live
without water.”
Most of the Indians proiled by the
Times spoke of water: “We say ‘mni
wiconi’: Water is life,” said David Ar-
chambault II, the chairman of the Stand-
ing Rock Sioux, the site and center of the
protest over a pipeline designed to ship
oil out of North Dakota, under the Mis-
souri River. “We can’t put it at risk, not
for just us, but everybody downstream.”
GUEST EDITORIAL
From the Daily Astorian
Use Board of Appeals to Circuit Court.
The proposal has irked members of
the Planning Commission who are now
at odds with the council on the issue. At
their August meeting, Planning Commis-
sioner Robin Risley put it bluntly, saying,
“I think the whole community should be
more involved in that decision and you
are eliminating one of the steps.”
Gearhart
In Gearhart, the new rules go into ef-
fect in 30 days, followed by a one-time
60-day period in which property owners
may apply for short-term rental status.
Applicants must pay a $600 fee and show
proof they have paid their taxes. No new
permits will be issued after the 60-day
period. The new rules include parking re-
quirements and occupancy limits among
other restrictions, and the permits may
only be transferred by inheritance rather
than being passed on with the sale of a
home.
The clear intent of the new rules is to
reduce the number of short-term rentals
over time through attrition.
But those new rules have led a group
of homeowners to announce their inten-
tion to seek an election initiative that
would put an alternative proposal before
voters and supersede the council’s or-
dinance. The initiative would allow the
transfer of permits through home sales,
would increase the number of permits
allowed and calls for changes in the oc-
cupancy and parking limitations.
Although initiative backers say the city
hasn’t listened to them, Mayor Dianne
Widdop said after the meeting that “every-
one has had the opportunity to be heard.”
According to City Attorney Peter
Watts if the group does push for an ini-
tiative for the voters it is too late for No-
vember’s election, but it could be on the
ballot next year.
See RENTALS, Page A5
Trump should release tax returns
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Wallowa County
Out-of-County
Without clean water,
nothing else matters
There is a national discussion about
whether Trump should release his tax
returns. The mostly Republican opposi-
tion argues that the request is politically
motivated to hurt Trump. But doesn’t
this beg the question whether Trump can
be hurt?
We don’t know whether the informa-
tion is damaging. As a potential presi-
dent, he should be free of inancial she-
nanigans and we won’t know that unless
he discloses. We should know about i-
nancial shenanigans for the same reason
we should consider affairs of married
politicians as it relects on character, es-
pecially if they have lied about it. How-
ever, if he is a knight, the genius of i-
nancial wisdom, then, wouldn’t he have
the last laugh when the tax returns are
no more out of the ordinary than, say,
Clinton talking to a Saudi businessman
after a donation was given to the Clinton
Foundation, which proves sequence but
not cause and effect? I would sign on for
Trump’s “innocence” if he could prove
that much.
But wait, there’s more. A national
survey (May 2016) of 2,001 registered
voters found that 67 percent — 60 per-
cent of them Republicans — think pres-
idential candidates should have to dis-
close their returns. Just one in ive voters
(21 percent) said they don’t think the
inancial documents should have to be
released. Then contrast that with more
Republicans (85 percent) saying they
thought presidential candidates should
be required to provide an original copy
of their birth certiicate (but, hey, there
was no political motivation behind that).
Patrick Dunroven
Enterprise
Vote Keniston/Taylor
Tired of the same politics in Wash-
ington, D.C.? Want a president and vice
president who employ the U.S. Con-
stitution instead of what corporations
and lobbyists want? Chris Keniston and
Deacon Taylor are those candidates.
Both are veterans, having served this
country. Both are Constitutional cen-
trists. Both are not career politicians or
billionaires — they work for a living.
So this fall vote for a real change,
vote Veterans Party of America: Chris
Keniston/Deacon Taylor. They’re not
on the ballot in Oregon so please write
them in. The Veterans Party of Ameri-
ca was set up by veteran but is open to
everyone. For more information, visit
www.veteranspartyofamerica.org and
http://chriskeniston2016.com.
Jim Fryckman
Lincoln City