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.
Wait a minute. Aren’t the real “white supremacists” those in the educational establishment, including teachers and administrators, that continue to fail “students of color” and do nothing to change the results of their educational misfeasance? This behavior, the graduation of public school students who do not have minimally proficient skills to succeed in life, is now so prevalent as a make one wonder if it is by, conscious or subconscious, design to keep “students of color” from competing with white students. This is a disgrace.
According to liberals, black students are not smart enough to pass proficiency tests, and yet conservatives are called racist by these same liberals. Hmmm.
Well, if the POC are not aware of that duplicity on the part of the prog/left and keep voting democrat, one has to wonder…
Slave holders wanted uneducated slaves. Something PoCs should consider next election.
As I mentioned above, if they could figure out what the prog/left has done to them since LBJ’s Great Society legislation, they would be voting republican.
Speaking of considering something:
The Israelite slaves were out of Egypt before the ink was dry on their release papers…but then, they had the capacity and acumen sufficient to the task.
What kind of people have no desire to return to their homes after long suffering abduction?
Didn’t John McCain himself get on a plane and return to his home, his family and his countrymen after five and a half years of abduction and prison?
Despite those conclusions, Napolitano simply announced a cessation of the use of such scores in admissions.
Janet Napolitano is currently a Member of President Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board. That alone is concerning given her “performance” as Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security and US Attorney in Arizona for Bill Clinton. Her tenure at University of California was full of controversy, which being California speaks volumes of her disastrous leadership. It should not surprise anyone that the United States is under attack, particularly public school education, by the same forces that are attacking Israel. Radical Muslims and the Left in America have one and the same goal: end democracy and rule via censorship, fear, and by any means necessary.
Americans have been purchasing weapons and ammo for self-protection in record numbers since 2020: Whites, Hispanics, black Americans and now Jews as well. All groups see violence exploding in America, particularly with the 2020 DOJ/DNC/MSM manipulated election. Since Hamas committed barbaric crimes against Jews on Oct 7 and continue to this date, which the Left in America all deny, anti-Semitic crime has mushroomed. No banner headlines in the NYT, WaPo, no press releases by AG Merrick Garland, not alerts by the FBA, much like they all herald monthly about “right wing” movements.
The DOJ/DNC/MSM prefer to discuss Trump, pronouns, and “white supremacy”. However, guns/ammo sales receipts reflect what Americans believe. One has to read the news from European news sources to learn about the rise in anti-semitic attacks in America.
The DNC have lost the Talking Points narrative™.
America’s Jews rush to buy guns as anti-Semitic attacks rise sharply
Across the US, there have been 107 recorded anti-Semitic incidents since Hamas’s attacks, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The country’s anti-Semitism watchdog recorded a 37 per cent rise in attacks on Jews last year.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2023/10/23/americas-jews-rush-to-buy-guns-anti-semitic-attacks/
Estovir, I have a nonprofit that assists houses of worship to get grants to improve their security. One of the requirements is to have a vulnerability assessment completed. The wait time used to be less than a week. But within the last month amid rising incidents of anti-Semitic crimes , there is a backlog of six months.
Estovir,
Well said and correct about having to go either outside of the US news or independent media.
Reading MSM, you would never think there were anti-Israel protests going on.
One news outlet posted contrast rallies in London. The pro-Israel ones were peaceful (unless anti-Israel counter protesters showed up). The pro-Palestine rallies clashed with police.
Who Can force their ideology on the public?
A Goebbels or an Obama.
Also, with ignorant Americans the Kardashians could likely impose an ideology on the country. But lately is seems as if Daffy Duck has been in charge of information.
Any ideology smart enough to use the medi/education industries of the culture can accomplish this, the proof of which is evident in our own nation.
Abraham Lincoln and his fellow traveler, Karl Marx.
________________________________________________________
“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”
– Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837
_____________________________________________________________
“Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.”
– Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, 1848
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“The goal of Socialism is Communism.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
________________________
“Historian Adam Tuchinsky, in his study of the newspaper, says that the Tribune spurred one of the first public discussions of socialist ideas in the U.S. Greeley and his managing editor, Charles Dana, identified with the utopian socialism of Charles Fourier.”
“The Tribune covered the failed 1848 democratic uprisings in Germany, France, Hungary, Denmark and other European nations. In Paris, Dana reported, “Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.” Dana met Karl Marx who would end up writing over 500 articles for the Tribune on a wide variety of topics. Later Dana was hired by Lincoln to be the Assistant Secretary of War.”
– Dave Anderson
____________________
“They consider…that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln…to lead his country through…the RECONSTRUCTION of a social world.”
– Karl Marx Letter to Lincoln, 1865
Here you are:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/23/upshot/sat-inequality.html
$$ turn into better preparing kids for these standardized tests.
It’s enough to make one think that Democrats are interested in minorities only to keep them poor and dependent on government largesse, and reliable Democratic Party voters.
This is a cultural issue, not one of race. I represent one of few Black Americans of an older generation. We were taught to be the best we could be at whatever we did. We knew that education was the great equalizer. 75% of Black kids were born to 2 parent families. The bed rock of our areas were not drug dealers and criminals, or those who made a living entertaining white folks. They were educators, lawyers, business men, doctors, professionals . We followed Christian values,. Now we have chosen to follow those with nothing to offer, rap stars, welfare pimps (called politicians) and athletes. People come from everywhere to this country . In one generation they surpass us by every standard. Restore the family and a sense of morality. Demand more from the kids than the minimum needed to graduate.
You are quite correct but you would need to cleave the black population from the democrat party in order to do that and the lure of free stuff is just much greater than the discipline and self-control required to be a member of civil society..
@Anonymous..Re: “People come from everywhere to this country ..”Agree! However, Thomas Sowell has counseled us as to how and why much of that lot are moving our culture in a direction of values amenable to them, and far less so the values you laud.
When Barack Obama proudly declared that ‘change is coming’, he had well in grasp the concepts that his mentors instilled in him at Columbia University. Baby steps. Revolution gained by slow evolution through the insidious insinuation of change. The advocacy and implementation of the prejudice of low expectation is now at work in Oregon.
What I’m supposed to care that this or that state can’t educate their prodigy. The fools that go to the polls and elect negligent candidates are the cause. Occurring election after election, where those that are subjugated to this dense mentality re-elect or elect incompetents full of notions and conceit that they know how to run anything, there are so many examples the 2020 election of President Biden is a glaring one.
Cause and effect are thrown out and replace with appeasement to feelings of the child student(s), care of feeling replacing learning basic fundamentals. John Locke in “Some thoughts Concerning Education” in part from #38 wrote.
“…. children should be used to submit their desires, and go without their longings… The first thing they should learn to know should be that they were not to have anything because it pleased them, but because it was thought fit for them…. IF they were never suffered to obtain their desire by the impatience they expressed for it, they would no more cry for another thing than they do for the moon.”
“An empty head is not really empty: it is stuffed with rubbish, hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.”
Eric Hoffer
This is why Oregon is a place that investors are and will avoid.
The the problem also is that this is in our system of government this falls under the prerogative of the individual states. Common Core, is an educational initiative first established in 2010 details what K–12 students throughout the United States should know in English language arts and mathematics at the conclusion of each school grade. The initiative is sponsored by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. But there are no requirements for states to follow. The initiative sought to establish standards across the states in order to ensure students graduating from high school are prepared to enter two- or four-year college programs or enter the workforce. Among states that never adopted or dropped out include Alaska, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia. Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee dropped out, Utah is under review. Clearly, if this doesn’t work at the state level it will fail at the national level. This is a governance problem and not just an education problem.
When your teachers aren’t interesting in teaching and your students aren’t interested in learning, you don’t have a lot of alternatives.
In the “Feudal Law of the American Educational System”
This is the continued making of the Have-Nots in America into the 3rd World American Caste.
Wherein the Haves will have Subjects to reign over. Corporate Fiefdoms that rule the Supply Chains keep the masses bound in Chains-of-Labor. The Police State keeps them in line. And Internet Carriers distribute the Opium that tranquilizes Them.
All Hail Hillary Clinton, All Hail Hillary Clinton, All Hail Hillary Clinton, …
[OH I don’t know Jonathan, I just can’t take it anymore]
Got It! I see it clearly now.
There is no longer a distinction between ‘𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐛’ and being a ‘𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐟 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐛’.
They are now Integral.
If your kid is in public school ask him and his friends if they know where and what Washington, DC is. A shocking number don’t know.
I asked after seeing a recent video of UCLA students being asked the same thing and not knowing. Also, they didn’t know the name of the ocean on the east coast of the US. Nut the UCLA students could name all of the Kardashians.
American education is failing and has been failing for a long time.
In modern America, the only area in which meritocracy is viewed as non racist is in college sports. What a way to compete with the rest of the world in STEM subjects. What a way to ensure future technological innovation and economic growth. What a pathetic Country the US has become. I bet no one could name one other country in the world where academic achievement is viewed as a symptom of a systemic racist society.
So…when can we stop paying the schools part of our property taxes? What would the courts have to say about that when you can prove that schools are not educating kids?
This seems to be a natural outcome of an education philosophy that has permeated many public school systems for years; that philosophy is sometimes called a “value added” philosophy. In essence, teachers do not have to enforce course standards as long as they can claim that they have added something to the student’s education. As a result, in particular in mathematics, students are admitted into upper level courses without the competence to complete these courses. If the failure rate is high for these courses, the teacher is blamed for these failures. The resulting pressure on the teachers results in lowered standards in order to lower the failure rate.
Virtually every city, state and Education board that takes this approach is run by Democrats. Waiving essential requirements to read, write and do basic math for predominantly minority students is blatant racism by these liberal politicians and teachers unions. This is nauseating, when will minorities wake up that the Democrat party pursues policies that are destroying them?
Seriously: what we have, and have had for decades, if you’ll forgive the metaphor, is one giant, unilateral arse wiping of our kids. With certain generations, all of society (though each with their own motivations) has refused to allow kids to ever be metaphorically potty trained. It IS that rudimentary and philosophically crude, and we are finally simply reaching critical mass.
It is not a ‘minority’ issue – it is rich, poor, homegrown, and everything in-between. In fact, in the past, it was often the parents of my wife’s migrant farm working kids that cared about education the most. She taught in Harlem and the Bronx as well, and years ago, before they were largely occupied by gentrified millennials. What we are seeing is actually a full-scale implosion a long time in the making, and there’s plenty of culpability to go around.
Oh, and PS – with this, IMO, we are seeing in microcosm what will be our collective macrocosm if we don’t start turning a corner.
James,
I think we are already seeing the beginnings of that collective macrocosm with college students throwing temper tantrums if you use the wrong pronoun, words are violence, silence is violence, and they need safe spaces for microagressions.