I recently wrote how public educators and unions were methodically killing public education. The best example this week comes from New York where a school board committee has solved the dismal math and reading scores for children in the system . . . they lowered the standards. This is not the first system to gut its standards rather than improve its quality of education. As teachers and unions object to school choice, they continue to make the case for private education. Parents are increasingly voting with their feet. The board is simply calling the lack of proficiency “the new normal” and changing the standards. Done.
New York will permanently lower the math and reading proficiency standards after embarrassing results in state testing. It is akin to shortening the 100 yards dash to 50 yards to stay competitive on speed.
“A scoring committee that reports to the Board of Regents said Monday that they must take into account the results of last year’s tests for students in grades three through eight. Some schools posted shocking results — in Schenectady, no eighth grader who took the math test scored as proficient. And the scores for the third through eighth grade tests throughout the state were much lower in 2022 than in 2019, a result no doubt of the absence of in-person learning during the first year and beyond of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
This may seem insane to anyone with a proficiency in logic, but it is being shrugged off by many in New York. There is now an acceptance that the public schools cannot actually educate students to proficiency levels needed to succeed in the modern world. In the meantime, some districts are moving to a four-day work week for teachers to reduce stress.
We previously discussed the elimination of gifted and talented programs to achieve equity by artificially lowering everyone to the same level.
Other schools have eliminated the “F” to guarantee 100 percent passage rates.
Still others have suspended proficiency standards to simply graduate students who cannot reach required levels in writing, math, and English.
There is also a move to end standardized testing.
In a prior column, I was particularly moved by the frustration of a mother in Baltimore recently who complained that her son was in the top half of his class despite failing all but three of his classes. Graduating students without proficiency in English or Math is the worst possible path for these students, schools and society.
It is the dumbing down of America but administrators, boards, and unions insist that it is better for these students, who face dismal prospects for future employment. In the meantime, we are pouring billions into schools that cannot produce a single proficient student in basic subjects. If this were a business, there would be criminal fraud charges across the nation.
That’s a clear contradiction that we’re all intellectual equal, but that’s well known by everyone including the Left. Slowly but surely the dots are connecting.
This and similar articles are part of an effort to destroy public schools. Standards should be RAISED, not lowered, and our public school system should not be eliminated in favor of privatized schools.
This and similar articles are part of an effort to destroy public schools. Standards should be RAISED, not lowered,
🤔 Huh? Of course the standards should not be lowered. But In your twisted logic, writing an article about a public school system lowering the standards to hide their failure to provide a basic education, is an effort to destroy public schools. Despite billions upon billions of taxpayer money being pumped into the public school system, it is the system that is destroying itself.
…and our public school system should not be eliminated in favor of privatized schools.
No one is arguing it should. In my town, we have one high school and one middle school. There are a number of reasons (woke), including how poorly they are performing, that I will not send my son to them. And yet I have no choice but to still pay for them. I might be able to get an inter-district transfer to another public school that might score better, but those other reasons would still be there. That would also mean driving 2 hours to drop off and pick up my son. As it stands right now, my only other option is private. I have to pay for that AND pay for the public school. I would still need to drive out of town, but the education and school culture would be worth it. Now you tell me, does it make any sense to want our public schools eliminated? Hell no. I want them to do what I’m paying them to do. And if they don’t, I want to eliminate my money going to them and instead have it go to a school that deserves it.
The department of education is unconstitutional as a violation of Article 1, Section 8. Congress has no power to tax for the few Americans who attend school as school is not debt, defense or “general Welfare….” Congress has the power to regulate ONLY money, commerce and land and naval Forces. Americans are free and not under the dictatorship of the monarch or proletariat. Americans are free. That freedom is provided by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. School is local and may be funded by a city or county, or as free enterprise in the private sector. Parents must pay for their children – by earning money or soliciting money from private charitable organizations.
Lowering standards for students is a lazy approach to solve a much larger problem. This is academic malpractice. This is why students must have the option of being moved from classrooms with incompetent teachers and poorly performing schools. Lowering standards cheats the student from their full potential and in one sense communicates this message, “You do not have what it takes. You are not capable and I am too lazy to care.”
There is no new fancy program or curriculum that can solve this issue. It comes down to the relationship between a teacher and the student, a teacher who will put their foot down and say, “Enough is enough!” It requires a gifted administrator who has put in the hard yards in the classroom and truly has a heart for children. Yes, there will always be poor performing students in a classroom. There always has been and always will be this situation. That is no reason to hold back those who have the drive and potential to excel in academics.
This is like a coach poorly training a fighter, expecting little of them, letting them come to training when they please, than sending them into the ring with a seasoned, well trained, physically strong opponent. They will be obliterated.
When the money runs out from the endless and reckless government spending and there is little to no safety net for those who do not know how to work nor have any marketable skills, the consequences will be very difficult.
I will add a disclaimer. I was a classroom teacher in my early years in the public schools and in a school with at large population of at risk students. That was in the 1980s and I had a principal who had been in the classroom for twenty-five years before becoming an administrator. We also had academic leaders within the system who had put in many years in the classroom and understood the challenges teachers face. Those were the days before the testing lunacy began in earnest and before “inclusion” and many other programs were foisted on the poor teachers and students.
My hats off to the teachers who remain in the game and have put in the years and long hours and are dedicated to children and their success. I recognize that is difficult and there is no easy fix.
Well the lowering of standards is not going to help at all. I am cognizant of what Ms. Zapien is saying but we have had people in education supposedly dealing with English as a second language for a long time but they appear to still have no understanding of how to do it. It would seem that a separate learning path and testing should be in place for those with English as a 2nd language. I have no issue with separating kids out in to classes that achieve exactly that and then set points at which they might transition back into regular classe. I think though the problem being discussed today is more about schools systems that have nearly all English speakers but have lousy scores. The scores of children across the nation have been declining for some time and they are not all packed with immigrants who don’t speak English.
Sometimes it’s where they emigrate from. In the 1980’s we had a large number of Eastern Europeans living the communist block and many made their way to our small city. Many had + tb skin tests so I saw them in clinics. It was astonishing the progress that these adults made in 1 year from barely capable of saying a sentence in English to almost fully fluent and assimilated, already with jobs and moving on.
What we are dealing with are places like large cities with incompetent school boards and abysmal results.
In the news this week is that the state of Texas is taking over HISD (Houston Independent School District) mainly because of abysmal scores, scandals and actual crimes by administration. Governor Abbot is, of course, labeled a racist and every other epithet under the sun.
What the news has failed to report is the HISD has been a basket case for over 40 years. I spent 5 years in Houston 1974-1979 doing an Internal Medicine Residency and a Pulmonary/Critical Care fellowship. My wife and I lived in HISD with our 2 year old son. I was torn between an offer from Baylor to become full time faculty in Pulmonary or going to a small city in the Midwest. Houston had many desirable things about it other that the weather (which is awful). The deciding factor was when the Head of HISD went on TV and proudly proclaimed “that if your child graduated from high school in HISD we can guarantee that child the equivalent of an 8th grade education”. On TV and to the Newspapers! We left Houston and have never regretted it. There were already battles between HISD and smaller local groups to secede from HISD and form their own school districts. Obviously things have not changed for the better.
Demographics have changed there obviously but apparently not the results.
As an aside, I find any public school district that has “Independent” in its name completely misrepresenting the word. EVERY public school is literally ‘dependent’ on funding from everyone in the district and in nearly all cases, the State (other peoples money), too, including people who home-school their kids and those who haven’t any school-aged students. “Independent”, my caboose.
Illiterate and innumerate.
And they wonder why schools are seeing declines in students as parents pull their children out of these schools (if they can) and home school them or send them to a private school.
Might be interesting to see in the future if companies would want to see what education system you attended (k-12).
Mussolini made the trains run on time by basically adjusting the departure and arrival times. Airlines today do the same thing. I was a pilot until I retired. I had to take check rides every six months. The standard is 100% and anything less was a failure. You could retrain a failed maneuver but had to pass it on the next test. Failure in piloting is not an option. By doing what NYC schools and other schools are doing, someone will literaly die when the airlines do the same thing. When they can not find pilots who can pass with 100% they will lower the standards. It does not take a rocket scientist to tell us where that is going. But he future pilots of the world will cry like babbies if they dont pass with say 75%…..One only needs to miss the ruway one time out of 100 to kill all aboard….but that is what tomorrows adults will find fair and equirible and diverse too…Lots of diverse people are gonna get killed when it crashes!!!
“When they can not find pilots who can pass with 100% they will lower the standards.” “Lots of diverse people are gonna get killed when it crashes!!!”
That is a perfect illustration of the principle: You can fake reality. But you cannot escape the consequences of faking reality.
Shear lunacy. As the dumbing down of America accelerates the country that achieved great things in technology, medicine, and other innovation, we fall further behind. There will be no breakthroughs as our children and grandchildren come of age.
Lowering standards because of poor test results achieves neither equality or equity. Rather than setting the bar lower, raise the bar. Kids want to learn and the only way that will occur is through challenge.
We can point to the pandemic as part of the problem but the trend to lower standards started before that. The downward trend says more about the quality of teaching than the inability of students to learn.
We either have a country populated by the poorly educated and illiterate, or we can have a country populated by educated and literate achievers. It is our choice; change course or crash.
It is hard for me to believe that the parents of these children would actually believe this was a good idea. Lowering the standards for their children will only make it harder for them to live a happy and healthy life.
JFB, parents are a mixed bag. Having sat at the table with the parents of special education students for nearly 15 of my 30 years in education, there are the ones, although very few in number, who resist the lowering of standards. However, the majority don’t want their little sweethearts to not feel the pressure and vigor of academic integrity. This process in New York is not new. Teachers have been complaining about it for the past 10 years. You are just now hearing about outside the school buildings.
I believe most of them do not. You see parents of all stripes and educations all have the same worry. Their children are not getting educated.
Too bad state Departments of Education and school boards don’t have Educational Duty to taxpayers like corporate boards have a Fiduciary Duty to shareholders. I’m sure the kids love this dumbing down now, but they will suffer for it later. It is sad.
Here’s a different perspective from someone actively in the field of teaching. Before I begin, I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not believe in lowering standards and that I do believe that some testing has value. To begin, I am a teacher of students who come to school speaking a language other than English. My students come in at a disadvantage and frequently read below grade level and are challenged by academic language. We try very hard and so do they, but the fact remains that many of these students do not have enough of a command of cognitive academic language skills to be able to handle the rigors of Standards of Learning Tests. When the SOLs were less rigorous, the most proficient of the students had enough English to make the bar, if you will. Once the language became more complex, fewer and fewer passed. The simple fact remains that for the most part, if a child has an education prior to learning English it takes 4-7 years to become proficient in academic language and if a child comes to school with no education, it takes 7-10 years to achieve academic language mastery. Combine that with our state’s insistence on kicking students out of ESOL classes far too early without literacy restrictions and you have a recipe for disaster. This was prior to COVID and all of its attendant issues. Moreover, the SOL (Standards of Learning) Tests are punitive, give us absolutely no data to help students (the purpose of tests to begin with), and have become an end to themselves–so much so that an unintended consequence is that students no longer know how to think through a problem–they do know how to take a test though. I could go on and on. Virginia has gone to the growth model–which is great because some considerations that were not there before are in place currently. We also need to consider what we are testing. If we are testing a skill in English (like main idea and details), then we need to allow for a read aloud if the student is not reading on grade level. Otherwise the student does not have access to the material and cannot give an informed answer. We shouldn’t be testing their ability to read–we know the answer to that. Sometimes we mix up what we are testing with another skill. English learners, new to the country, are required to take a math SOL despite the fact that a goodly portion of the test contains word problems and complex language. Yes they can a read aloud accommodation–but they are hearing mostly gibberish. That is most unhelpful. Why is this so? Some bright soul decided that math is the same the world over, so even newcomers have a fair chance of passing the end-of-year tests. Overall, we test too much in general and post-COVID the testing has gotten far worse. Localities and the States they are in need to come together to have an honest discussion of how much testing is a reasonable amount. Until they do that, our students are being over-tested and under-taught. It’s a huge disservice to the students. Our locality has put a lot of effort into trauma informed care–but really it’s just lip-service because we are over stressing students who are already stressed with–you guessed it–too much testing. At the end of the day we need to feed the pig more than weigh the pig. We are not doing that and more’s the pity.
And the Democrats thought tyrannizing their opposition would drive out stupid people. The Democrats are the stupid ones.
I just wish some of those who are fleeing would stop bringing the Democrat Party with them. That also is pretty stupid.
“It is akin to shortening the 100 yards dash to 50 yards to stay competitive on speed.”
That is precisely what “equity” is all about. The left believes down deep inside that people “of color” are too stupid to keep up with the rest of us and so they are determined to make everyone equally stupid. And, many of the leaders of color (including the national teachers’ union) are all too anxious to agree because it keeps the money flowing with no strings attached. This “racism of low expectations” is the most insidious racism of all. It makes me sick to think of the millions of successful minorities whose accomplishments are ignored because they do not fit the narrative.
Dumbing down.
When will the Fed agencies start doing this to all things because DEI workers can check off all the correct boxes except for competency? And I will offer up the biden administration as proof of where this is going.
This reminds me of when Congress changed the definition of too much nuclear radiation which a human being can reasonably tolerate, making it greater, when there was a serious leakage of nuclear radiation from the Dugway nuclear storage facility in Dugway, Utah.
Anybody else remember when NY had some of the best, most challenging schools in the nation? Other urban centers did, too. I actually had a friend when younger that went to Bronx Science – it was indeed excellent then. We can probably kiss that goodbye forever right along with the Ivy Leagues. What a joke.
School Administrators have convinced themselves, and many parents, that the social cost of not promoting sub-standard students far outweighs the benefits of forcing them to buckle down and learn their subjects while in school. It benefits neither. It’s also a very convenient way to absolve themselves of any blame for graduating non-performing students (and keep cities and states pouring more money into their programs). Thank you, Jonathan, for keeping this important issue front and center.
And then they will cry racism when the kids can’t get jobs. At some point you would hope people, no matter how brainwashed, would wake up and realize the problem is not racism.
They don’t need jobs. They can move to San Francisco and get $5 million in “reparations.”
Levels of stupidity must be maintained, and even fostered. Without stupid people to vote, the Democratic Party would pop like a bubble.