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.
Sadly it’s not only Oregon- https://www.inquirer.com/education/grading-for-equity-philadelphia-school-district-slams-20231024.html. As you correctly pointed out, these kids will be woefully unprepared for the next level of education. Sometimes I think it is by design so that a culture of victimhood can be advanced. Very sad.
It really has less to do with preparation for the next level of education and more to do with preparation for leading a productive life. Basic math and reading skills have to be in place for almost every job. Without those, an individual can never maximize their capabilities. Some don’t want to, but don’t penalize those who do by having low expectations for them.
Asians aren’t “People of Color?” I guess some minorities are more POC than others.
Sports is the one and only area where standards are not lowered for minorities and other favored groups. Medicine-fine. Fire departments-lower the mandated amount of weight being required to lift (as if a person on the 10th floor being carried isn’t an issue). Police-strength not an issue, have the woman chasing a guy into an alley. Law-lower standards, it’s no big deal.
Only in sports do we retain a meritocracy because sport is only a game.
It is not only a game, it is the means by which the underbelly of our society is kept placid, they are entertained 24/7 and well fed at all the drive-thrus, Sam’s Clubs, Costcos and other such dispensers of fake food.
I consider it tragic that schools continue to lower graduation requirements so more students of color can receive diplomas or degrees. The reason it is tragic is not because students of color are incapable of mastering important subject matter, it is because for many one or more of the three key elements necessary for academic success are absent.
I like to think of education as being similar to a three-legged stool. One leg represents student engagement, another represents parental involvement, and the last represents teacher competence. Most three-legged stools I am familiar with no longer work correctly with even one leg missing.
Unfortunately, students of color are commonly missing a leg or two. Lowering requirements will not fix this but will effectively cover up the real problem.
I don’t disagree that all three must be present.
What you fail to do is identify why one or all of those components are missing.
The reason, simply put, Govt programs have gutted the family structure.
Until we allow people to take their school taxes and spend it on the school of their choice, nothing will change.
So, UC President Janet Napolitano buried her head in the sand and disregarded her own staff’s findings that standardized testing actually works ??? No wonder why President Biden nominated Napolitano to be on the “President’s Intelligence Advisory Board”. Must be lots of extra sand in Washington.
This is nothing but good news for Oregon residents. Who in their right mind wants their children proficient in writing and math.
Every institution and profession controlled by the left devolves into pure incompetence.
When LBJ launched the Dems Great Society Program, he declared it would make education the greatest on the planet. 80 years of Dem policies produced this result today. All Dem policies
Are failures
They are failures if judged by their professed goals. But they are great successes if judged by their real goals: destruction of American society; increase in the power of the federal government over the American people.
That is the only way that minorities excel–by not excelling. The people behind these decisions know extremely well the intellectual ability, or inability, of the subjects
In the minds of public school teachers, the school system exists for the purpose of providing a comfortable living for the teachers and administrators. The students are just a necessary evil, like pimples for teen-agers. They get away with this corrupt attitude because of their close political alliance with the Democratic Party.
Edward, they get away with it because they launder money to Democrats. The PUBLIC unions give money to Democrats, the Democrats then sign give-away contracts with the PUBLIC unions and kowtow to them over all issues, then the PUBLIC unions give more money to Democrats and then Democrats give more money back to the PUBLIC unions. Rinse, repeat and rinse again.
“. . . Oregon schools solved declining scores by eliminating their requirements . . .” (JT)
Can’t make it as a pilot, truck driver, fireman? Lower the standards.
Can’t make it as a doctor, judge, teacher? Include the irrelevant (e.g., skin color) and thus dilute the standards.
Can’t graduate, get into college, earn a good GPA? Eliminate knowledge as a requirement.
Aren’t talented or competent? Elevate mediocrity and thus destroy standards.
Thus the destruction and evil of a culture of egalitarianism — an anti-standard, anti-achievement ideology hatched by a Harvard professor some 70 years ago. Slowly but persistently, that ideology oozed into the culture to corrode everything.
Sam,
Well said.
I would only add to what end state?
To get them, keep them dependent on the state to provide them with free stuff to include UBI.
What will our society look like in say 5 years with this kind of just passing them along to be fair?
I think this kind of thing is the reason why we are seeing so many parents, to include those of other skin color than white, want school choice. Or sending their children to private schools or home schooling.
We are going to see two different sets of students. One that will forever be dependent on either their parents or the state. The other, who can actually read, write and do math and succeed in life.
“. . . to what end state?”
Destruction of talent is the end. (A motivation that is difficult for a benevolent person to project.) It is essentially a nihilistic ideology. The result is the enshrinement of incompetence. Exhibit A: The Biden administration.
If these people can’t cut it in a merits-based system, maybe they really are inferior.
And what have sensible, aware people done to combat this?
“It declared that such proficiency tests are unfair to students of color.”
Wow, every family of color even the color white should be outraged. Could this decision be based on the teachers proficiency in math and reading are below standards or is there something more nefarious at hand?
I believe it was Karl Rove who coined the phrase – “The soft bigotry of low expectations.” The democrat party’s slogan.
50 shades of Atlanta, Georgia. What other lies beneath in urbane environments?
Democrats have been making failed inner city plantations for decades…think Camden NJ
Democrats know they WORSE it is for people…the MORE government Money they get to STEAL!
cut 50% of Federal spending. End all federal aid to colleges, cities and states!
Let them FUND their failures!
NYC doesn’t need billion from Iowa for their subways! They have the people and money!
It’s the logical result of so-called progressive and woke ideology.
Q: What did the sociology major say to the engineering major?
A: You want fries with that?
Aren’t they really saying “you’re too dumb to learn this stuff?”
Or is it that the teachers are incapable of doing their job?
In my experience, it’s not typically the teacher, but the administration of the school districts that have a lot of culpability. Families have a lot of responsibility as well in this process. With the breakdown in the family structure, the chances of a child being successful in school are diminished. Either way, the child is being cheated. If a student is slacking off, it is the responsibility of the family and schools to keep them on the straight and narrow.
If a person wants to see what our future is going to be like, they need only look at the condition of modern day education.
@E.M.
Thank you for pointing that out, as it is accurate. What the Professor has written is too, but education is being devalued across the board, and the people in question will pull their kids out of voucher schools for weeks at a time for superfluous reasons just the same as they would public schools. They will still do their kids homework for them. They will still fight for IEPs and doctor’s notes so their kids never face the possibility of being challenged. They will still assume that they will simply take care of their kids later on (not seeming to grasp that they can’t live and thrive in a non-functional society as parents either, they are not immune, and that is indeed the future they are creating) and their kids will assume others will step in like their parents did. Rigor itself is what is in its death throes, as is any sense of the value of personal autonomy and competence, let alone genuine expertise. It all adds up to literally nothing working for anyone.
E.M.
Well said, great comment.
Aren’t they really saying “you’re too dumb to learn this stuff?
Absolutely E.M., but it’s even worse than that. They are also telling everyone they have no solution to the problem. It would be like if the manufacturer of Takata Airbags told everyone they can’t fix the problem, so reduce the safety standards. And just like the airbags, this Oregon policy is going to blow up in their faces.
I may have missed it Professor, but nowhere in your piece do you mention the root cause of this education disaster: the unions. This is a glaring deficiency and not anywhere up to your analytical standards. Please retract this and start over again.
The unions are nothing more than whores for their Democratic Party pimps. You keep people loyal by keeping them needy and on the dole. The best way to keep anyone needy is to keep them poorly educated. Why make it anymore complicated than that?
Who would have thunk it? The 2005 film “Idiocracy” turns out to be prophetic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
In a few more years it will be a documentary.
Why bother with schools at all other than to keep incompetents employed. Why not just mail out at birth a HS graduation certificate and be done with it, close the schools or turn them into low income government housing for illegals and just pay the unionized teachers to stay home and build useless lesson plans? This is a farce and everyone knows it but until the adults in this society stand up and demand an end to the prog/left grip on our nation we might as well close up shop as a nation.