Op-Ed- Oregon Education: Myths Mislead Many, Money Now Mandated, Methods Must Be Measured

"Public records readily available show most school districts managed at least as well as would most businesses, of any size and type, under the same drastic dollar disasters."

(Salem) - Far too many Americans today, including some parents who surely should know better, believe our schools are failing miserably. Inefficient operation, inexcusable administration, and uncaring teachers seeking only salary rises and obese pensions are loudly proclaimed as the evil causes.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but feelings built on myths --perpetrated by propaganda for decades-- have deluded many democratic decisions on educational funding by elected representatives, whose faithful function is surely the heart of our democracy.

Corporate `campaign contributions" --massively provided for further propaganda purposes-- have managed to manipulate both tax-rates and tax-breaks, providing `monies-saved" for stockholder distribution, despite obvious damage to Oregon`s work force and future.

The Reagan-era circus saw the start of myth-making on this and other social and economic issues, which has now reached monstrous proportions.

After two terms of the Bush administration bashing every conceivable benefit and its ongoing drum-beatings this week, disguised as an honest update on the status of our nation, there can be little doubt as to where we find ourselves NOW.

Despite extremely serious, sometimes disabling, cuts in current funding --in Oregon, continuing through far too many Legislatures and several Governors. Public records readily available show most school districts managed at least as well as would most businesses, of any size and type, under the same drastic dollar disasters.

It is simply NOT correct --nor now even marginally moral-- to manipulate further mass assassinations of truly essential learner capabilities via continuing this rabid curriculum-centered curtailment, decimating individual learning at all levels through graduate school.

Any pretense of practical necessity is negated by exploration and examination by parents, professionals and particularly Legislators. `Volunteering" and visits can make realities really visible and very revealing -- go, `see with your own eyes!"

But seeing means sensible, sensitive acceptance of realities realized when found and understood. What you find NOW is NOT what you want to find for 21st Century life-after-school. The reason is as plain as the Norquist NO TAX RISE Pledge: `Never any tax-rise, NO Way, NO Time, NO How!".

We fail to collect more than $30 billion in national tax delinquencies. Oregon businesses will get $101 million in tax credits from the 2003-05-budget cycle, as kicker-credits of 36 percent against taxes-owed for 2005, when they file tax return.

While the Legislature set up a reserve fund for education with lottery proceeds in 2002, it has established no such reserve fund for education from excess income taxes. Corporate income taxes now stand at less than five percent of all Oregon income taxes, down from 18 percent in the mid-70s, according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy in Silverton.

Then, too, there is our choice of reasonable, rational and painful prime-action elsewhere:

In Iraq, at a total cost now set by world-famed economist Joseph Stiglitz at over 2 TRILLION dollars!!

Communications are thus collapsed catastrophically and continuously, flying in the face of any rational, reasonable and relatively intelligent action to remedy collisions from confrontations of two cultures, in too many schools. Oregon teachers find many newcomers needing attention for language learnings; they mostly cope without counselor or consultant.

Yet national-law NCLB now mandates monstrously manipulated school-progress testing, enforcing unfunded mass measurements to prod every school to progress --`or else". The only precise pattern for measuring learning is by the proof provided when that learner does what you demanded he-or-she learns to do.

For that, practical actions comparing each learner against a personal benchmark is the responsible tool for testing. Oregon already leads the nation in that precise proof-of-pudding protocol.