Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-12-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

State Rep. Dwayne Yunker believes he has a better school reform plan with his latest bill, what is really needed? Your calls and experiences in reaction to the talk.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at www.clouserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Myers. It's a few days ago that a Democrat on my social media page, facebook.com slash Bill Myers Show, was complaining and saying that, you know, Bill, you just grab issues just so you can beat Democrats with them. And it's like, well no, listen, I would love to wake up in the morning and hear about great

programs and great policy and wonderful results coming from Oregon Democrats' policies. Unfortunately, you just can't find any. I can't find any. And like I said, this is not even grumpy Bill. There's enough coffee in me right now that my grumpy Bill from the 6 a.m. hour has kind of mellowed a little bit here. And I really would like to just wake up sometime, you know, take a look at the Daily Courier, the Road Valley Times and say, oh, yep, they're doing the right thing. Yep, they're doing the right thing. Yep, they're doing the right thing. And yet everything seems

to be about doubling down on failure. And nowhere can you see more of this with the Oregon Department of Education and state schools. It's like we're number 49, we're 49, yay, we're 49. And there are dueling school accountability and reform bills in the state legislature this time. There's one from Governor Kotec and her folks, and there's another one there from State Representative Duane Younger, a Republican from Grants Pass. Duane, welcome back to the program. Good to have you on. Thank you, Bill. Thanks for having me back. Okay, now are you grumpy like me this morning, or would you like to wake up and find things are actually going in the right direction or not, or do you just want to

put this bill out there to beat Governor Kotick because she's a Democrat? What do you think? No, I just want common sense stuff. When it comes to education, there hasn't been much common sense for a long time in education in Oregon. When it comes to the people in charge of the education, let's look at who is put in charge. We have a doctor, Charlene Williams, in charge of ODE, ODA, Oregon Department of Education.

And she was hired from out of state to take over the Portland School District. In her time there, she was, didn't make them any better. She went over to Vancouver for a year to be an assistant over there. And she was passed up by someone with less qualifications. And what's Oregon do? We hire her. She's a DEI hire. That's what she is. And she's been in office July.

She was appointed to her position almost two years ago in July. And we are not getting better. So it's easy to say, how do I trust the people in charge? Reasonable question here, Dwayne. And I noticed that Governor Kotec ended up putting out with big fanfare a couple of days ago that wants to hold Oregon schools more accountable for academic outcomes. And one of the things that she said first off is that Oregon's public schools need

more money. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, wait a minute, are we already talking about a 15, 16, 17,000 dollar per year tax bill that's attached to practically every student there? Is it money or is it policy? How do you see it? Now maybe in some districts it is some money. I don't know. What do you think?

You know, I'm sure there's some districts out there that can use some money. That's not, but when you're spending 17, I think it's almost $17,000 per student and the outcome is bad, we're not getting very good, you know good outcome for our dollar and to spend more money and say it's a dollar thing. I think it's not, one of the things we haven't been doing for the last four years is testing. We opted out of the federal standardized testing. That's what my bill 3055 is. We only know where our kids are actually at. And why did they opt out of testing again, the state of Oregon? Why do we say we're not going to do federal testing? Well I have my own thing. I believe it's because we want to show how bad we really are. In other

words it would expose how bad. It would expose the state of Oregon. I think that's where it's at. Yeah if the news would have been good from standardizing testing then they never would have gotten rid of the federal standardized tests, right? If the news was going to be good. All right. We all grew up with standardized testing. I mean, that's just, you know, to see where we're all at. And, you know, I don't think, and I'll just be honest, I'm not a great tester, but I do think it's a, it does give some abilities. And in Oregon, we have a thing about just pushing kids

along to the next grade. And I'm not looking at just as some outsider. My wife's a fifth grade teacher. She's been doing this for several years. My son's a high school counselor. His wife's a teacher. And my sister-in-law was teaching the year out in Burns. So you have all of these people in your family that are within the system. And when you talk to them as a state legislator then, what do they tell you as the as the weak points of public education, Dwayne? Well, we have a behavior issue. We've taken so much control away from, you know, teachers to now we have to remove the students from the

classroom instead the disruptive kids. There's just so many things going on. We focus so much on diversity, equity, and inclusion. In Oregon, we have a person in charge in the ODE that the whole Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. What has that got to do with reading, writing, and math? It's got nothing. That's what we focus on.

We're focusing on this health stuff instead of your kid being able to read. What does it matter if you have two daddies or two mommies? I don't care. I wanna know if that kid can read and write so he can move on to the next grade. And then these kids are being, my wife works in a private school,

my rest of my family works in public schools. My wife says, I get a kid from the private school, the public school, and they want to take the test over and over and over until they pass. Well, they don't do that in a private school. You either get passed or you failed. In public school, they get to take the test as many times as possible. Is this about the, is this part of that which we've talked about wanting to game the statistics so that it looks stronger, that a school looks better educationally and academically, that

it might appear in reality? Is that part of that, taking the test over and over? I think it is. I think to me, you're teaching children really bad skill sets for life. So if I was your employer, Bill, and you were working for me, I'm not going to have you go do something 10 times until you get it right. I'm going to fire you. You know?

It's true. Yeah. I couldn't, I would not pass the muster doing that. Pass muster doing that. You know, that's just common sense. You're teaching these, well, boss, I'll get it right next time these, well boss I'll get it right next time. I'll get it right next time. I'm like that's not what we want. Yeah and then you say that as a ship's captain as you run the freighter into the bridge right? You know that kind of thing. Well

let me try it again. I'll work on that. So it appears though that Oregon's, arguably Oregon's public school system has collectively run aground against the bridge. We know this when you're looking at a state that spends a lot of money and yet we have very poor academic outcomes and a lot of politicized education, a lot of it involving, like you had mentioned, DEI, pushing LGBTQisms and pushing lots of social issues rather than pushing educational achievement here. So you have a bill which is in competition with Governor Kotech's education reform. So what would it do and

what's the number of it and you know where is it right now? I look it up here you have to take baby steps on everything because if you throw them, everything at them, it will never go anywhere. Yeah, they'll choke and they won't even get a hearing. Right. You're right. So I just wanted to go back. My first, the only bill I have for this, other things I have several bills or steps, but I was like, okay, maybe we can just work on getting back to testing kids so we can know where they're actually at. And that's 3055 is just getting back to the standardized testing. I want to know where our

students are actually at. Are they where they're supposed to be? Should we be pushing them along? We've pushed graduation requirements. It's so low now. Almost everybody's graduating to make us look better. I've noticed that that seems to be a big crowing point for a superintendent of a school system. Look at our graduation rate and I would tend to counter this because I was a little suspicious when they start pushing the graduation rate. It's just like, yeah, but what is your achievement? What is the functioning level of a graduate and do we really know for sure?

Yeah, you know this is to me about most of my son mom before he came a high school counselor He's been at that for two years. He was a substitute in my Spanish in his master's degree. He's like dad There's guys in high school. They can't even read I'm like you should be able to read in high school that can't even read. I'm like, you should be able to read in high school. You know, you've passed the basics of elementary. You should be able to read things. Maybe there's a couple words you can't pronounce or get tongue-tied. But they were still getting passed through the system, onward and upward, right? I mean, are we helping these children out? This is the future of Oregonians? Well, these people are crippled.

These people are, in essence, crippled by their public school education. Something is very seriously wrong here. You know something, Representative Duane Younger with me this morning, Duane, that reminds me of a story I was talking about the other day. There is a young woman, a 19-year-old, I forget exactly which system it is, I think it was a back East school system. She's suing her school system and she's a 19-year-old now because she talks about how she is functionally illiterate and the school system really did nothing to try to help her this entire time. She's

been in there all these years and yeah, she was an ESL, English as a Second Language thing, but even then, even the ESL apparently didn't teach well. Is it going to take something like that maybe? And it's not that I want to see everybody start suing the Oregon Department of Education, but maybe it's the only thing that will sharpen minds. It's a serious question. It is a serious question. You know, the taxpayers that are paying for this and they should be getting a quality product when people graduate and I would say they're not getting a quality product from the

Oregon school system. Let's back up a little bit. There's another problem we have here in the state is also is a lot of these teachers are spending time, maybe not as much in Southern Oregon, maybe a little bit more in Medford than Grants Pass, but we have people that don't even speak English in our systems because we take all the illegals also in the state, and that takes a lot of time having to reteach them English as a second language. Do you happen to know what percentage of class time or budgeting in a typical school district is pushed towards ESL? I don't have the numbers. It's really hard to get these departments, these education departments, to really bring this stuff

in when you ask them questions. They won't tell you. we'll have to get back to you kind of a thing. But there is definitely, when I talk to teachers or ask them questions, this is a requirement. They have to test them. Even people that are here in this building as representatives know this. They brought it over, what about, you know, English second learners? That's, you know, usually coming from Democrats. They know that there's that is out there because we take a lot of them. We do not turn anybody away for education. Then they're not paying the... They're not paying the freight. And so this is yet another burden on the public on an overburdened school district there. Hey, your relatives here, Representative

Younger, who are in the system in public school right now, you had mentioned something about discipline a little earlier on and I didn't quite understand. I was wondering how much of this of what we're looking at here is disruptive classroom time. And I've talked to one person who filled in for the Medford and the Medford system at one point said that sometimes it was pretty nuts in some of the classrooms and that it wasn't always a real pleasant experience. Now, that was with older kids. What do we know, what do you know just anecdotally through your relatives who teach? Well, yeah, they've told me some small incidents of children that are causing very disruptive behavior, acting out. And when I went to school, I...

Okay, what happened? Let me just ask, what do they tell you happens if you have a super disruptive child right now? Is the rest of the child more or less punished in an attempt to try to keep the disruptor in the class, or is the child removed? What is the procedure right now? Maybe it's different for school districts. I don't know. I don't know from each school, but I know that I had a story from one of my relatives that she had a kid that was hitting and these are younger kids, you know, second graders, stuff like that. And it's like you have to, the kids are doing the right thing, all have to be moved out of the classroom. And then they sit outside waiting

for the administrator to come in. While the kid is there hissy fitting and screaming and are biting and clawing, right? That kind of thing? Yeah, yeah. We're not just dealing with the one kid. The whole classroom gets disrupted, gets all turned upside down for this one child.

And then the kid's right back in the classroom. So it is a revolving, no parents are not being... I don't think... There's a lack of parenting too. I would give a little bit of that. We have a lack of parenting going on too. Yeah, so we have family structure issues involved and then ESL and also behavioral issues here. Now, if the unions wanted to change this, couldn't they? I can't imagine that when you have the public teachers unions as politically powerful as they are and politicians cowering in fear if the teachers unions are upset, wouldn't they want something done about this?

And have they? Have they asked? I'm... The teachers union, SEIU, and all of them are so powerful up here with the Democratic Party. If they wanted something done, it would be done up here. And that's how much power they feed their coffers. The SEIU gave me an F. That's the only F I remember.

SEIU doesn't like you. Okay, we get that. I understand. I understand. But it's a serious question. If they're complaining about behavioral problems within the school and they're saying that there are procedures from ODE that say that we're not allowed to do this etc etc etc. The teachers could fix this through their collective bargaining, couldn't they? They could easily say that we don't feel safe in the classroom, we need this fixed and until this is done something would be done. I wonder why they haven't asked for this so far. You know done. I wonder why they haven't asked for this so far. I don't know why they haven't asked for it.

They're usually asking for more money. It's always about the dollars. Yeah, okay. Well, I would hope that, what would help a lot is that you can have disruptive classrooms. You just can't. It's rough enough getting young kids especially to pay attention and buckle down into academics,

and yet that's what this is for. It's the reason why we're spending $17,000 a year per child, that kind of thing, to do it. And it sounds like there's a lot of different issues with public education though that are causing these problems. It's not just the money, it's not just the behavior, and it's not just the union, there's all sorts of things. And you're at least trying to get standardized testing back. So just this little itty bit of reform in, right? That's what you're hoping to do? Yeah, I'm just trying to ease us back into what we used to do before we became so horrible. Let's get back to the basics of things. I'm not asking us to have, you know, I grew up the time when you had a paddle, you know what I'm saying? I thought it was great, but I

know they probably were not going to have that. It wasn't so disruptive. I remember those days too. I remember the principal had what was called a board of education. There wasn't a lot of classroom disruption in the day, but I also have to say that family structure was probably a little stronger and stiffer then, a little more spine in those days. And parents at that point would back up the discipline process. I don't know if they would now. Maybe it's different. Yeah, I don't know. I know some,

you know, like Arkansas when I was stationed there in 2010, they still, or 2008, they still had the Board of Education there. It's probably why they, when people make fun of the South, I'm like, have you been to Arkansas? They're still doing better enough in Oregon. It's just funny, you know, people like to, you know, hey the South, your education, Have you been to Oregon? You know? They're doing things. School choice. I believe we need to have more schools. You know who's doing well in Oregon? Home schoolers. Private schools and home schoolers. Home schools and some of the charter schools, that's who's doing better than public school.

So if they can do it, everybody else can do it. And we need to stop passing kids, moving them on when they're not getting concepts. I would say that both my boys, I have four kids, both my boys, I held back when they were younger and they both graduated 19. One has a master's degree now and one's getting ready to graduate with a bachelor's degree. You know, I'm glad you brought that up because not everybody develops academically at the same rate. And by the way, boys tend to develop more slowly than girls. And this whole idea where you keep them regimented into their age group doesn't necessarily match where they are when it comes to the educational experience, right? It just makes common sense.

You know, it's exactly as my wife and I, my oldest son, we had this, we were in Oregon at the time and we wanted to hold my oldest son back. And it was in Grants Pass, I went to the school and we're like, hey, we don't think he's ready. He's having some problems. They argue with me. We moved out to Arkansas, I got stationed there. And then they go, yeah, let's hold them back. It was the best thing ever for him. He was immature. This was in fourth grade. He needed more time to concentrate on his reading and writing, which is we all should know if you can't read, you can't do any of the other subjects. You got to be able to read. Yeah. Moving them along is not going to help them. Just won't. Then they'll be frustrated

and dropping out or disruptive is what happens usually when you have a frustrated student. Yeah, you're trying to act out. He has a master's degree now. He's a high school counselor. He loves working with kids and older kids. It was the best thing for him. Did it hurt, sting a little bit, you know, got to help back? Yeah, but guess what? To today, at 27 years old, he knows it was the best thing for him. The educational experience matches where the child is, which I thought this was all about in the first place, all right? Now, if you could criticize, you're probably not a fan of the governor's plan because you're trying to get testing back in.

Is there anything good in Governor Kotec's call for making schools more accountable for academic outcomes? That's, you know, her big program that she's talking about right now. Well, you know, she does talk about some standardized testing. So give her some credit there. All right, good. Give her some credit there. You know, she wants to take some control away from the local school areas. Well, I think that some of our problems is because there's too many mandates from the state already.

You know, they're too busy doing... I hear this in every department. Well, the state makes us do this report and that report... The state makes us do that. The state makes us do this. Okay. Yeah. I've heard that from other people too.

There's so much bureaucracy in everything we do in Oregon, probably in the United States, is let's get back to the basics of learning and reading and writing. Let's stop worrying about all this other culture stuff. I think that's it. But you've got to understand that the governor has been in politics in Oregon since 2013. A lot of these problems are caused by her. And she was in the state legislature before being the governor. Yeah. Yeah, she was. She was. Yeah, she, she was before that.

Or she was the head of the head of the house. And, and guess what? She has no children. The next, next speaker we have right now has no children. Speaker Fah She has no children. The next speaker we have right now has no children. Speaker Fahey has no children. So we have people that have no children trying to tell people how to teach children. I have a very hard time trusting people that never had children making decisions for children. Interesting point. Interesting point. Do you think that you could get standardized testing put back in with your house bill? You know, at this point, I don't even have a hearing for it. It's like you said, when you started out, this whole, I started talking, every day you

try to think of good things to happen, you know. And to me, that would be a great thing for the kids. It really would be. I mean, yeah, they'd probably grumble because they have to take more tests, right? And then, I don't know, maybe you'd have some parents or teachers saying, well, now you're having to teach to the test. Maybe that's the downside. I don't know.

I really don't know. It's hard to find good positive things happen up here. There's very small wins here for some small things, but when we know there's things that really need to be fixed, we struggle as a Republican caucus or the Republican side of getting these wins because we're we are very in the minority here. The only way that you could really stop much of anything would be the walkout, right? That's all you could do and there's probably not unanimous support for any of that this time around, huh? And I doubt that would ever happen now at this point. You'd be out there on an island

by yourself not really doing anything because they would still be moving on. They only need four Republicans to have quorum. If there's 36, you know... All you need is four mush heads, and that's all it takes, right? Four mush heads, and the Democrats get to vote for their bills. Got to love it. Yeah, and they only need 31 to pass, and they need 44 to quorum. And so they're going to get what they want. So I fight up here every day.

I do a lot of remonstrances and speeches. You know, there is a positive... I do have a positive. I have a hearing this morning at 8 o'clock on some elections. I had several. I think I had six elections built. I have a hearing this morning. I'm hoping it gets more.

All I'm asking is for the Secretary of State every month to push out information on our local where we're at. So in Oregon, we don't really...the numbers...they just put these raw numbers out there. Well, I want it to be like Oklahoma. They're more detailed. Every month they tell you, you know, how many people have died, you know, who's moved out of the area, or stuff like that. In other words, Troy, this is a bill that would help make the elections cleaner. In other words, you would clean the rolls more routinely then. Clean the rolls. Yes, I do have a hearing this morning at 8 o'clock.

Good. Could still submit testimony. I think this is just a small start in the right direction. It's House Bill 2435. I'm going to be hearing at eight o'clock. And we just want some transparency and integrity in the elections rolls that we can show, hey, you can get online, Bill Maher can look up to,

you know, Jackson County and say, oh, look it, 10 people moved out of this county, four died, you know, and the rolls are matched. You know what I'm saying? We don't have more voters than we have registered. It just... Because as it is right now, we're at about 104, 105% in most of our counties.

Well, you know, we have more people on the voter rolls than we have voters. And so, not... We're just looking for some transparency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very simple. Just a little common sense, all right. State Representative Duane Younger, I think this is Francine. Francine, you had a question or comment here for Duane?

Go ahead. I do, yeah. When you mentioned that, you know, the kids failing and they just get retested until they pass, you know, I mean that's not exactly the right approach, but to retest a kid that's failed is actually not a bad idea. And I'm speaking strictly in the academic arena, not the workplace. But if a kid fails a test, then you have them go study the subject further, and then give them the opportunity to test again, which is how they learn.

So just saying retesting is not a good thing. It's a way to just try to get the numbers up. If it's done right, I think it's actually very useful. So do you think it's done right here? What's the difference between what Francine was talking about here, Representative Yunker, and your criticism of retesting? I think that if we're just retesting,

you get one other chance to retest. But if we're going to retest six times or seven times to get there, then the kid's just memorizing the test. I think that's a good point yeah yeah it should not be like that. Yeah that I would agree if you're just going to say okay you got tomorrow to retake the test and that you get your second choice chance and that's it then okay but if we're going to do it you know until pass it, then that's not a standard. All right. Francine, it's a good point. I'm glad you brought it up there. Representative Younger, I'm glad you joined us here. You're welcome any time.

And best of luck on this. Just bringing back standardized testing is not everything, but it is a start, and Oregon could really use some good educational starts these days. Okay? Thank you so much. Thank you. Representative Dwayne Yunker. It is a 737. When it comes right down to it, when we buy things, we want the best Good morning. This is News Talk 1063 KMED. And you're waking up with the Bill Myers show.

A little long there with the state representative D Dwayne Younger, but I wanted to dig into those educational issues there. And you know, we all, and I really do think that, you know, both sides of the political aisle in Oregon really do, you know, nobody wants their, their kid to come out dumb, you know, no one wants to send them there for years and not be served there. But we do have very different ways of getting there and it appears that the Republicans are at this point in the game more focused on some academic, increasing academic rigor, which would be a good thing, and also being

accountable with testing. And at this point, our Democrats in Oregon appear to be, at least that's the way it is, appears to be more concerned about making life easier for the Oregon Department of Education and the teachers union, unfortunately. And I'm hoping that that will get pretty serious here. You know, I didn't talk about this with St. Rep. Dwayne Younger, but I mentioned this when I first came on last hour,

was, gosh, what will happen when you have the Oregon Department of Education no longer under the thumb of the federal Department of Education, because they've been cut in half. Staff was cut in half yesterday. Big thing. And I really, you know, enjoy, you know, traditionally Republicans have always been saying, yeah, get rid of the federal government, get federal government out of our kids' education. And that sounds

really good. Except that, I don't know, if they come, if they completely get rid of it, I don't know. And it's not that I want to advocate keeping the Federal Department of Education because I don't. You know, I'm being pushed and pulled. I'm wondering if you are too because grant stream funding, I don't like that. But maybe grant stream funding is the only thing that might be able to get Oregon to be a little more reasonable. Because as it is right now with the current political makeup of the state of Oregon, hey just turning education back

over to the states more and having federal governments role reduced will likely not have a good outcome here. Would you agree on that? Maybe we talk about that after news, I don't know. But that's kind of my general impression of it. 7705633, hang with me and I will get right to your calls. We have some open phone time here and then Captain Bill is going to be talking about about wildfire and grass problems, okay? Do you have an electrical checklist that needs to be CCB number 250730? Hey Terry, I'm gonna grab you before news here so we don't lose you in the cell, but I was asking about the education situation

and the Federal Department of Education being lowered, being shrunk and less influence here may go away entirely, we don't know. How do you think it looks in Oregon? Give me your thoughts on that, huh? For education? Status quo, it's to be the same. I don't see how things will change for us personally. You are tying this to the abortion conversation, so I guess

we're just going to have our own laboratory? Right, they're giving that to the states, right? Oh, they say now it goes back to the states. That's great, but for the states that have, you know, blue governors, it's going to be worse or the same as it was before Roe V. Wade got changed. Hmm. All right. So not a lot of change then, other than perhaps less federal dollars coming in, which... Yeah, well, it's sort of like you were saying.

It's not that great that it goes back to the states in certain states. It's even worse sometimes, rather than leaving it in the federal government's hands. What would you think then about Oregon will no longer be able to hide and or blame it on federal policy? How about that? Well that's a good thing but I mean it will persuade some people you know that are against it and for the people that are for it you know they're just going to have their say. On the other hand though people who hand their children over to the system end up sacrificing

their child though to make system end up sacrificing their child though to make a point and that's the real issue I guess. I think most people are I think now and not all of them but more people are educated nowadays and they sort of get it and like I say they're setting their ways. There is some gray areas still in there but a lot of people are educated nowadays I think a lot more. Alright, hey appreciate the call and thanks for making that. News brought to you by Millet Construction. It's on Bullitt. That's 770 KMED.

Before we get to the calls we'll get right to them though I have to give you an animal news update. Animal news and this came from courtesy of Reverend David, who sent this story from Breitbart. In Tennessee, a pit bull named Oreo accidentally shot his owner Monday as the owner and his girlfriend were asleep in the bed in Fraser, Tennessee. Fox 13 reporting that the owner had a gun in the bed. Oreo jumped onto the bed and his paw got stuck between the trigger and the trigger guard, resulting in a discharge of the firearm. And the owner, fortunately, getting just a graze wound to his thigh. Girlfriend describing Oreo is very playful, saying that it likes to jump around and stuff like that. And the UK's Guardian describing this incident as the latest incident of a kind of accidental shooting that

Intermittently occurs in the US having your pitbull pull the trigger. There we go 11 Yikes You know, it's probably it's probably under the pillow right that kind of thing. Yeah, you know Let me go to as it wild salmon Steve. Hello Steve, how you doing this morning? Go ahead. Hey Bill. You know, trying to figure out how the state got so crazy, it goes all the way back to

Barbara Roberts. When she was the governor, she was a left-wing loony. And I changed my registration from Democrat to Republican when she was in this office back in the early 90s, I think, maybe the late 80s. But she got past this vote by mail thing and nothing but crazy has come through the state of Oregon legislature since. You can't help but notice a correlation. Now correlation may not necessarily be causation but it sure does suspiciously look that way. I don't think you can deny it.

I don't know how you fix it, but eventually people are going to get tired of crazy. Or else the only people who will be left here, maybe they're the ones who enjoy crazy. I don't know. Point well taken. I appreciate't know. All right. Point well taken. I appreciate the call there, Wild Salmon. Let me go to next line here. Hi, good morning.

This is Dave, I think, right? Right. This is Minor Dave. I wanted to say was, is I did the second and third grade all in one year. I was supposed to be in the fourth grade. But Mrs. Martin in the third grade, second and third grade, was my tutor for teaching me to read. And she taught me by phonics. And then when I got into the fourth grade,

cause I caught up cause I did the second and third grade all in one year. And by the fourth grade, I was reading at grade level. And it's- So she really saved you, in other words. She really helped you. Yeah, right. And Mrs. Martin, and then in the fourth grade I had Mrs. Work, which she was the high school

wife, Mrs. Work. The two of them together made me the reader I am today. Reading is the key, Dave. Reading is the key, Dave. If you don't read, if you're not a proficient reader or adequately proficient, it doesn't matter what else is being brought into your school experience. You're not going to be able to do the work. You just can't.

Just the way it is. Glad you were able to be helped there. We go to line three here. Little open phone time. Good morning, who's this? This is Sally. Hi Sally, how are you? What's on your mind?

I'm great. Good. My grandson was in a private school here in Oregon through second grade. In third grade my daughter transferred him to public school and in the two years that he has been in public school his math has regressed. We discovered just last week he doesn't even remember now how to subtract two years in public school. We're thinking now of leaving Oregon altogether.

Boy, Sally, that's a shame here. I wanted to ask there, are they testing or is the Oregon public school system, I don't have any children in the school system, you know, they're in their late 20s and 30s now, you know, they're older. Is the Oregon school system, are they teaching that weird style of new math which was getting a lot of play on social media that makes absolutely no sense to anyone as how to, because the way we were taught to do math was pretty simple and pretty effective, you know, I thought. Most people, are they doing that weird stuff?

That weird way of doing it They have to draw Squares or rectangles or whatever they're drawing, you know If you're doing 18 plus 7 you draw 18 and then you draw 7 squares It's stupid. It's really it's really ridiculous Well, I remember and of course I know, I remember, Sally, in which there was a lot of drilling and a lot of the basic numbers in the additions, subtraction, division, multiplication, you know, a lot of those basics were learned through road deals.

We do B's and things like that, and it worked out pretty well because you weren't thinking about seven plus five equals 12, you just knew seven plus five equals 12. We're having to draw out any boxes. That's really interesting though. I'm sorry to hear about your grandson though, my gosh. Is there a way to maybe get him back in public school or is there

just not funding for that? Getting back in public school. He's still there. My daughter, first of all, she wanted to pull him out right now and start homeschooling. Well, originally we were homeschooling and then they went to an additional school just for extra stuff, right, for socialization and things like that. But they also were taught math and he loved it. He was ahead of his whole class. He had gone in this book and then the next. But to have skills and then have it regressed when you go into the public system, that's

certainly a sign of something wrong. All right. Thanks for sharing your story. I hope you get a chance to stay. You can find a way out, you know, out of this bad education. Good morning. Hi, who's this? Welcome.

This is Chris and Medford. Hello, Chris and Medford. So I can tell you that when I moved to Oregon, when I was 11 years old, Oregon is right third in the country for school. Boy, what a fall, huh? Right. And my understanding of these cuts is they're bureaucratic. We're not talking about cutting pay for teachers or anything like that, those types of grants.

But I really just want to know how we save Oregon in general. I mean, I don't see a path and I'm really, as much as I hate bureaucracy, I think if the federal government does not have some kind of pull, some kind of rules that they can instill, you know, that we have to see this grade level or, you know, we have to see these standards. So I'm hearing then that you're a little more grounded then about the gutting of the Department of Education federally because Oregon's Department of Education is so poor. Is that kind of where you're coming from? Well, yeah, I agree with these initial cuts that they've done because they're all bureaucratic positions. All right. It's not. That's fine. You know yeah that's fine but but yeah I think if

we don't have some kind of outside direction that we're gonna end up with a bunch of idiots that are all living in Hawthorne Park. That's not helpful. I get it. Chris, thanks for the call. 770-5633. Apparently we're talking education this morning. Let me go to the next line. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Good morning. Is that me? Yes, it is. Hi, Lynn. Oh, hi. Hi, it's Lynn.

Yeah. This is a great discussion. A lot of good truths have been shared. You know, I was a substitute in the Medford School District for about five years and learned a lot. Yeah, and believe me here, Lynn, I don't want to bash teachers and even Governor Kotek. I don't think anyone wakes up in the morning and says, hey, we want our kids dumb. All right? The teachers are fantastic. I am so impressed. But the way they teach math is insane. And the teachers have to teach that way. And the idea is they want the kids to understand the math concepts, and that's why they have to write these long

paragraphs explaining how they got their answer when they can't even write a sentence yet. It's very developmentally inappropriate. Where did this come from? Do you know? I don't know, but I think it might have come from Bill Gates. Where did this come from? Do you know? I don't know, but I think it might have come from Bill Gates. Oh, no wonder. No wonder. Bill Gates would never put his kids in a public school, but boy, he'd be happy to destroy everybody else's experience. Well, look at the name of his education program that was supposed to save the schools, and it just made them much worse, of course. But the other thing is they don't require that kids memorize their math facts. And so I'm substituting in high school math classes and I'm watching kids add 6 plus 8

on their calculator because they don't know it's 14. And God forbid they don't know any of their multiplication facts. So they're really handicapped. Boy, in other words, the system is handicapping the children, is handicapping this way. And I know that there was this big thing, well, we don't want to just have kids in classrooms doing rote learning. I understand that. But the rote learning aspect is to give you the basic tools so then you're able to get

the concepts, I guess, is what I'm looking at. You've got to get the basic scaffolding of facts in your mind. And young kids are developmentally suited to memorize quite easily. Then when you're older and able to reason, you have the facts in your head and are able to work with them. And they've got it exactly backwards. Then on top of that, Oregon is a state with the Tampax and the boys, kindergarten

boys bathrooms. You've got all this ridiculous and damaging trans stuff going on. And I love the middle schools, but I would have 35 kids in a class, at least five would be identifying as trans or non-binary or something else. And you had to try to remember their new name that they wanted to call them by, but it wasn't in the system. So we have insanity baked into it then. Insanity is baked into the system right now. Yeah. And it's not the teachers. I mean, I talked to this English middle school teacher who loves the kids and he's really good. And he was like, it's the system. He was just like beaten down by the system. And

I really don't, I feel like the best thing to do is get your kids out of school, homeschool them, which is what I did with my son who was developmentally, he didn't learn to read till he was nine, never liked school, went to work as an auto mechanic. But he's 30 now and guess what? He's to, he's going to OIT to get a mechanical engineering degree because he was never made to feel stupid because he wasn't in those classrooms that require ridiculous things and there's too many kids to help the ones that are struggling. So I just feel like school choice is competing with the public schools is the only thing that's going to make a difference. And in the meantime, you got

to save your own kids. Yeah, you got to save your kids and not let them be the experimental lab rats for a really bad educational policy. And all the ideology. But the teachers are fantastic and God bless them because they're going to be able to save a few. Overall though, it's not working. Okay. That's disheartening. I wish I could hear something different about that. I've been wondering about this if it is possible to save the system from within without some

serious serious grabbing by the scruff of the neck and and and washing it out with soap so to speak but all right uh 7705633 try squeeze a call or two in there if you're holding i'll get right to you this is the bill meyers show on kmed and kmed hd1 eagle point medford kbxg grants pass