Oregon lawmakers approve money to buy an iconic waterfall listed on Redfin

But wow... that is truly insane and worse than I could have imagined. If I had kids I wouldn't even consider raising them in Oregon schools.

- focus on "science of reading" approach for young children: "the key idea is that teaching strategies should align with a wide body of cognitive research on how young children learn to read. That research, amassed over decades, shows that in addition to a broad vocabulary, children need to understand phonics, or the relationship between letters and the sounds of spoken language."

- "Mississippi also made other changes, like investing in pre-K, and holding back third graders who cannot read well, one of its most debated policies."

- "raised academic standards and started giving each school a letter grade, A to F."

- "Mississippi also measures how much students progress toward proficiency. Schools get credit if students show improvement — and double credit for the improvement of students in the bottom 25 percent."

- "The Mississippi Department of Education sends literacy and math coaches into low-performing elementary schools, with the goal of teaching teachers, not children. And state officials vet and approve curriculum used by the vast majority of districts, unusual in a country that prizes local control of schools."

But as you mentioned it includes random things like “road safety” in the education rankings. 20 points of the “education” ranking are all “safety” related.

“WalletHub” may not be the best source of unbiased stats.

That said, Oregon does have education issues and there’s a lot we could do to improve. My understanding is that two of the big issues are high rates of absenteeism and short school years. These two come together to lead to less time in the classroom

This has nothing to do with government and a lot more than nothing to do with sneering jerks who dismiss the potential for systemic failures and stupidity by handwaving it away as "catastrophizing" enabling the systems to produce exactly those sorts of failures. Any bureaucracy can screw up in the manner I'm describing, insurance, bankers, it's not just government.

Bad outcomes are very, very, very sticky because the people that rise to positions that could undo them don't get there by being disposed to such actions. Some non-standard organization (a bunch of monks who aren't pro RE developers) with a nonstandard situation are high on the list of places these failures will happen. They submit something to some agency and use the wrong words, some dude who doesn't see many of these cross his desk denies it on some grounds and you've just locked in a problem that's gonna cost a lot of money to undo and monasteries aren't typically engaging in the sort of high dollar economic activity where they can just fight through it knowing it'll be paid back later.

I'm not saying that's what happened here but this is exactly the kind of place it could happen.

>(Buildings in prime locations aren’t equivalent.)

There are old mills on the outskirts of town and then there are historic mills on the river on main street.

There are overgrown farmers fields and there are forests with waterfalls in them.

See what I'm getting at?

And I don't have any data to back it up, but it feels like the weather has gotten better (less gray, less drizzle) over the decades. Or maybe that's just Stockholm syndrome.

Still, I'll likely never move away.

I am hoping the Cascadia fault stays quiet another few decades, until I'm dead and gone. That, not the weather, is the thing that worries me.