Two years ago, we discussed how Oregon schools solved declining scores by eliminating their requirements that graduates actually attain levels of proficiency in basic subjects like math and English. In 2021, the changes were portrayed as just a temporary measure due to the pandemic. However, the state just extended it five more years. It declared that such proficiency tests are unfair to students of color. So, rather than give these students the level of education needed to excel in the modern workplace, schools will now process them out with degrees and call it social progress.
Public schools across the country continue to fail inner city children and appear to be be giving up on reversing this trend. In Baltimore, a survey found that forty percent of schools did not have a single student proficient in math. Rather than reverse that trend, the schools are just waiving the tests and graduating the students.
What is so frustrating is reading about failing school systems waiving proficiency and claiming that it is better for minority students.
American education faces the perfect storm. Despite record expenditures on public schools, we are still effectively abandoning students, particularly minority students, in teaching the basic subjects needed to succeed in life. We will then graduate the students by removing testing barriers for graduation. Then some may go to colleges and universities that have eliminated standardized testing for admission. At every stage in their education, they have been pushed through by educators without objective proof that they are minimally educated. That certainly guarantees high graduation rates or improved diversity admissions. However, these students are still left at a sub-proficient state as they enter an increasingly competitive job market and economy. Any failures will come down the road when they will be asked to write, read, or add by someone who is looking for actual work product. They will then be outside of the educational system and any failures will not be attributed to public educators.
If we truly care for these students, we cannot rig the system to just kick them down the road toward failure. It is like declaring patients healthy by just looking at them and sending them on their way. We have the ability to measure proficiency and we have the moral obligation to face our own failures in helping these kids achieve it.
Oregon board members said proficiency is now unnecessary and harmed minority students since higher rates of students of color failed to reach these levels, The Oregonian reported. The question is how the board is defining what is necessary. If any of these students hope to escape cycles of poverty, they have to be able to do better than the status quo. These boards are condemning them to the same endless cycle.
These proficiency standards were developed by academics to establish what they viewed as the education needed to excel in our society. Now, the boards are simply downgraded to meet their own lack of academic performance. State Sen. Michael Dembrow told the Oregon Capital Chronicle insists “I think there’s an assumption here that teachers are just graduating students, who don’t have the necessary competencies and I don’t know what the justification is for that.”
The point is that these students do not need to meet some low level of competence in order to be able to aspire to more than menial or low-level positions.
The move in Oregon occurs at the same time as a national effort to eliminate standardized testing and scores on every level of our educational system. For example, the University of California system joined the “test-blind” movement and said it would end the use of the SAT and ACT in its admissions decisions. The move followed a decision of California voters not to lift the long ban on affirmative action in education under state law. Many have decried standardized testing as vehicles for white supremacy.
University of California President Janet Napolitano sought to eliminate standardized testing by assembling the Standardized Testing Task Force in 2019. Many people expected the task force to recommend the cessation of standardized testing. However, the Task Force surprised many (most notably Napolitano herself) by releasing a final report that concluded that standardized testing was not just reliable, but that “at UC, test scores are currently better predictors of first-year GPA than high school grade point average (HSGPA), and about as good at predicting first-year retention, [University] GPA, and graduation.” It even found that “test scores are predictive for all demographic groups and disciplines … In fact, test scores are better predictors of success for students who are Underrepresented Minority Students (URMs), who are first generation, or whose families are low-income.”
Despite those conclusions, Napolitano simply announced a cessation of the use of such scores in admissions.
It gets better.. New York City public schools eliminated english proficiency tests for prospective teachers years ago because blacks and hispanics could not pass the tests at a much much higher rate than whites.
These are the perfect voting animals, later they will all become politicians. No need for them to know anything (if you have questions, ask Joe). Or just follow “the Science”, maybe some will be the future doctors, the only thing they need to do is to stick a needle in people’s arms, according to the protocol.
Ending standardized testing & proficiency requirements will not just “kick them down the road toward failure” but kick very many down the road to prison, as then very many will not be trying harder at academic achievement and will not be able to land good jobs if any. They’ll turn to crime as so many do now. Ironically, the claim that high standards & proficiency requirements lead to White (& Asian) Supremacy has it backward. Eliminating them will much ensure it.
The other outrage this elimination will do is destroy the significance of the school diplomas.
English and Math are tools of oppression. Oregon has its priorities correct and properly focuses on the important planks that all official Leftist Indoctrination Entities or LIES follow: the pro-terrorism talking points, anti-America and anti-Israel propaganda, LGBQRSTY biological theory, fake climate change rubbish, and general stupidity and perversion.
I was reading Stanford turns down 70% of applicants that score a perfect score on SAT.
Finally they can get those below par students in college. They will fail miserably but the politicians will be patting themselves on the back and taking credit for helping overcome white privilage!
they will not fail miserably … they will be “pushed through” with A’s and B’s … just like High School …
translation: college degree = meaningless
Sadly this comment is correct. These students will be pushed through college. Eventually they will have jobs in every sector throughout government and corporate America.
Is this not the racism of low expectations?
And now they will receive hefty student loans to go to university that they have been admitted to because of affirmative action (which is still quite alive). They will not be able to complete their studies resulting in their inability to pay their student loans. The cycle continues.
I’m with you, except for this: “They will not be able to complete their studies . . .”
It is impossible to fail, when those “studies” amount to: Can you fog a mirror? (If that’s too stressful, pay someone to do it for you.)
Not the least aggravating is POC’s tend to major in studies with no financial future because they were never taught the connection between work and money.
I just googled it up, parents who home school don’t get their fair share of the money alloted for each child’s education in the district. In fact it says they don’t get even a penny.
So 11 grand to 25 grand extra per home school student the teacher’s union unfairly sucks down.
I bet the NEA blows up the state budgets as their bloated retirement baby boomers are hitting.
Why even bother with making kids attend school? Just issue them diplomas for grade school and high school at age 6 . Then close the school and sell the land . Next fire all the teachers . Only cost of the “education ” system will the paper and ink for the diplomas and the stamps to mail them to the “students”
The slow, steady march toward Socialism continues! Can’t somebody stop this madness?
Socialists educate their populations. But yes, liberty and freedom are slowly dying in America although faster in some places than others.
Jonathan – While I understate your position on K-12 public education, the reality is that in most democrat run cities it has become a government/union cartel that operates essentially to provide employment to union teachers and to fund democrat campaign contributions.
Teacher unions represent teachers, not parents, children or education, and their primary focus is driving their ideological agenda. Any organization that will not allow the punishment of failure and the rewarding of success should not be allowed anywhere near children. Democrat politicians support teacher unions – at the downswing of children – to drive increased campaign contributions.
The only answer is universal school choice under which parents chose where their children get educated. Certain government/union schools will succeed, but they will be an exception – unless they can get out from under their union handcuffers.
JT’s recent article outlined harvard gives 80% of students an A.
Oregon Fail
Many inner-city public-school kids do not bother to attend school; when questioned why, they often respond, ” Don’t learn anything there anyway, so why bother.”
If a student cannot read, it will be difficult to learn anything.
That is not true. He doesn’t have to be able to read to become a doctor if the state provides him a license to practice medicine. Proficiency is racist.
(Sarcasm off)
Southern Nevada (Las Vegas) schools have done the same thing. The superintendent then brags about the increase in achievement. Completely disingenuous.
Remember when the schools had a huge scandal for not reporting crimes so their stats in that could go down ?
That was fairly recent and I bet it’s even worse now. Of course it was for affirmative action and equity students.
America is being “fundamentally transformed” – its Constitution and Bill of Rights shredded.
How’s that working out for all you communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs)?
Electricity is pervasively and ubiquitously generated and distributed by demonstrably competent individuals who constantly and unfailingly achieve the desired and required results.
Why not education?
Because public education is a communist (liberal, progressive, socialist, democrat, RINO, AINO), daycare, teacher union redistribution of wealth, and social engineering program.
“Only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked.”
– Warren Buffett
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We have always known that the public school student body is, in great measure, not up to the task.
Now it is revealed and exposed that public school and teacher union teachers are nothing more than absurdly overpaid daycare providers.
Teacher unions and all other union strikers must be terminated, removed, and replaced, and union violence must be illegal.
School districts must do they best they can with available teachers, “apprentice” teachers – not the Cadillac, but the Yugo version.
Americans are free to operate a private property free enterprise, and they are free to accept or reject employment.
Americans are not free to commit “strike” crimes such as slashing tires, breaking windows, intimidating individuals and the public, etc.
Jonathan: As someone who takes pride in sending his kids to public schools it appears you have given up on public education. Vouchers so parents can send their kids to private schools now seems the preferred option.
Public education is not being killed in Oregon. The real threat to public education is what FL Gov. DeSantis is doing. Back in May DeSantis signed SB 266, a bill banning the state’s public colleges and universities from using public funds to “advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism”. Now the state’s Board of Governors, that oversees colleges and universities, is about to issue strict regulations to implement SB 266. It’s a direct attack on “free speech”.
Andrew Gothard, president of the United Faculty of Florida union, has spoken out against the regulations: “Student groups advocating for social issues that directly impact them, such as university funding, free-speech rights, and even religious freedom will be stripped of all support, while faculty will be intimidated into not sponsoring such groups on campus”.
Fortunately, DeSantis’s attempt to purge FL schools of any dissent is running into opposition. A group of students and faculty have filed a federal lawsuit challenging SB 266. On Monday, a federal judge heard oral arguments in the case. He is the same judge who, last year, ruled that the “Stop the Woke Act” was unconstitutional.
So there is still some hope for public education. But we won’t find any concern by you in this column for DeSantis’s attempt to strangle public education in Florida. Why is that?
Public schools are communist (liberal, progressive, socialist, democrat, RINO, AINO) redistribution of wealth and social engineering programs.
The “Forgetting Curve” demonstrates that most of what is “learned” is forgotten immediately; public school education is, for the most part, an exercise in futility.
All teachers who strike are guilty of usurping power, committing acts of “strike” violence, intimidation of the public, etc., and must be terminated with extreme prejudice.
Americans are free to run a business or accept or reject employment—that is all!
Oddly enough, I have never heard of this “Forgetting Curve”. When I was obtaining an advanced degree in Clinical Psychology, this was not an accurate representation of learning theory, memory and cognition research, intellectual assessment or education standards. I suppose by you giving it a name and pushing this as fact, the “ignorant masses” (a majority by your description) may believe. Learning math is critical and communication is critical for healthy citizenship. Education in STEM is necessary and has provided our nation with the economic, social and military advantages we have. While some aspects of public education are stupid, ignorance is not the solution.
Two of the most important skills in navigating a free society are the ability to comprehend what is read and to recognize when the numbers don’t add up while navigating the brutally cold waters of our financial waterways. To lack those skills is to be left hopelessly vulnerable to predators wielding deception with the hard-hearted efficiency that a raptor does claws.