I don’t hate train whistles.

Not all of them, anyway.

In the depths of an overnight blizzard, for instance, when the curtain of snow muffles outside sound and the furnace hums softly inside, the warning sirens from a passing locomotive seem distant and unimportant.

Even, I daresay, pleasant, rather like the frantic yodels of coyotes heard at dusk from a desert camp.

The piercing blast from a passing freight at 2 a.m. in August, on the other hand, with the windows open to invite the breeze, and the only competing noise-makers an anemic cricket and a couple of diminutive frogs, strikes me (and my cochlear region) as an altogether different matter.

Silence is golden to sleepers

To the editor:

I agree with the writer of a recent letter to the editor concerning loud, disruptive horns from trains passing through Baker City.

By Walt Wegener

To publicly accuse students of cheating with support from the schools is intolerable. We take this complaint seriously and we are investigating thoroughly.
The report in the Herald is both premature and not aligned with typical definitions of cheating. Atlanta cheated: 44 school staffs actually changed student records and test papers to help the performance reports. We are told the anonymous complaint contends that the Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills did not predict student performance well enough to accurately place students in classes so the OAKS results must be false. The OAKS is not a strong diagnostic tool.
The OAKS is a pass/fail test. Students either meet or do not meet a level. The questions are randomly generated so predicting them to “cheat” is improbable.
When a district publicly reports OAKS scores we report a number of students who succeeded using percentage. All the schools and districts in the state use the same format. Thus, 73 percent of 140 are 102 students passed, formally “Met Standard.” Which also means 38 students did not pass, or formally “Did Not Meet Standard”. These are single numbers not averages.
Reporting of cheating in the Herald was potentially a violation of federal law because (FERPA, (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 C.F.R. Part 99), “easily identifiable” student records) were published. The Baker School District did not provide the data. The Herald reports the Department of Education did not release the data. The law makes it clear that information about groups of less than 42 students is protected if students would potentially be “easily identifiable.”
There is no “lack of transparency” by use of “averages.” Each family knows their scores. Who else needs to know?
We are dealing with students. They are bored with testing. They see no advantage in the testing. Some blow the test off. These required tests are of limited value.
Our staffs work hard to increase literacy skills in the schools. We are successful. Our teachers have built relationships with children so that most of the children will try. When they make the effort our children do well. The paper reported the evidence that effort matters but spun it negatively.
Currently there is no evidence of any tampering with questions or tests. We do think we may have some minor issues to fix and additional training to tighten up the process.
No cheating in the sense of Atlanta, D.C., Baltimore or Pennsylvania.

Walt Wegener is superintendent Baker School District.

The word “crisis” pretty well was worn out during discussions this winter and spring about Oregon’s two-year budget cycle, which started July 1.

Turns out we could have just let that word relax.

Considering what state officials have done — and what they haven’t done — in the past six months, describing the state’s fiscal situation as a crisis seems at best exaggerated, and at worst grossly misleading.

First, the Legislature failed to do anything to curb the cost of Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System.

More recently, Gov. John Kitzhaber, who wasn’t averse to dire predictions about the budget after he was elected last November, negotiated contracts with the two unions that combined represent most state workers.

Those deals, which have yet to be ratified by union members, look a lot more like the status quo than they do the result of a financial emergency.

Another wonderful home restored

The article, “A house that deserved to be loved” in the Herald on Aug. 5 was extremely interesting. This opulent Italianate Victorian structure has so many ornate and unique details. We commend Jack and Kari Waldhaus for restoring one of Baker City’s treasures.

John Fuzi is also restoring the historic Geiser home which was severely damaged in a fire. Baker City has a wonderful heritage of historic architecture. It is great to know that it is being preserved.

Frances Burgess

Baker City

By Jayson Jacoby

I keep trying to whip myself into firm political fighting trim yet I can’t seem to escape the flabby state of ambivalence in which I have long ossified.

It must be pleasant to confront the great legislative matters that affect hundreds of millions of people and conclude, with the absolute certainty of the zealot, which is the only correct and righteous course.

I’m convinced, at any rate, that dispatching weighty topics with such conviction is a lot more fun.

My allegiance in college athletics, for instance, is as stolid as a granite monolith.

I’m an Oregon Duck.

On any autumn Saturday, then, my outlook is crystalline: I yearn for the Ducks to win. And this desire is not sullied by even the slightest wonder about whether, just maybe, an Oregon loss might be beneficial.

This ability to distill any situation to two answers, whether those be win and lose, or right and wrong, is quite liberating.

In the decade since President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, schools across the nation have amassed reams of results from the standardized tests that the federal law requires.

Education officials emphasize how important it is that schools make those results readily accessible to the public.

Susan Castillo, Oregon’s superintendent of public instruction, made just that point during an interview with the Baker City Herald’s editorial board a couple weeks ago.

Castillo’s department makes available through its website the test results from every public school in Oregon.

Castillo describes this as “transparency.”

But the view seems rather murky to us.