Oregon Gov. Kate Brown privately signed a bill last month ending the requirement for high school students to prove proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic before graduation.
Brown, a Democrat, did not hold a public signing or issue a press release regarding the passing of Senate Bill 744 on July 14, and the measure, which was approved by lawmakers in June, was not added into the state’s legislative database until more than two weeks later on July 29, an unusually quiet approach to enacting legislation, according to the Oregonian.
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SB 744 gives us an opportunity to review our graduation requirements and make sure our assessments can truly assess all students’ learning,” Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor, said in an email to the Washington Examiner. “In the meantime, it gives Oregon students and the education community a chance to regroup after a year and a half of disruption caused by the pandemic.”
The bill, which suspends the proficiency requirements for students for three years, has attracted controversy for at least temporarily suspending academic standards amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Backers argued the existing proficiency levels for math and reading presented an unfair challenge for students who do not test well, and Boyle said the new standards for graduation would aid Oregon’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
26 thoughts on “From the Washington Examiner: Oregon governor signs bill ending reading and math proficiency requirements for graduation”
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The headline is exceptionally sensationalist.
As the story explains, the bill only *SUSPENDS* the proficiency requirements for students for three years.
The story goes on to say that lawmakers will be making new recommendations for graduation standards by 2022.
Given the Examiner’s conservative street cred I’d expect LESS sensationalism and more accuracy since they are not the much ballyhooed MSM.
The real story seems to be that they’re only suspending the proficiency requirements for reading and math for three years.
well, how many other states or districts did that? That would be a story worthy of the headline. The Examiner is not really known for that level of investigative journalism however.
I do not know how many states suspended proficiency requirements.
I will try to google now.
Okay, googling “state suspends proficiency requirements”, I’m just getting Oregon, Oregon, Oregon, and Oregon.
So I opened an incognito window and there were some districts that suspended testing but I can’t find any other states that got rid of proficiency requirements.
I don’t know if that means that I should conclude that Mississippi and Alabama probably did it too and so that makes it okay.
Hey! I should google “Mississippi suspends proficiency requirements”!
Got this:
I don’t get any hits for Alabama.
So Oregon and Mississippi have done this.
i suggested districts because a lot of states haven’t done it at the state level, but at the district level.
Though its interesting that both red and blue states have done so at the state level. I wonder what the Examiner said about Mississippi.
A lot of states haven’t done it at the state level? Huh.
I don’t know what the examiner said about Mississippi.
Well, Oregon and Mississippi have both suspended proficiency requirements for school.
As of All Covids Eve, only 11 states had some sort of test to graduate high school
https://www.fairtest.org/graduation-test-update-states-recently-eliminated
(some other sources have the number at 13, but are a couple of years older)
edit – and the link above does *not* include Oregon as one of them, so there may be issues with accuracy (and probably, definitions of what tests people are talking about)
I imagine that state standardized tests are one way to “prove proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic” but I kind of think that all high schools are more or less in the business of churning out students who have proven proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic? (And if they’re not using state standardized tests, they’ve got *SOMETHING* up their sleeve that they use to “prove” it?)
Like, at least on paper. “This high school diploma demonstrates that this person has proven proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
I mean, if the proposition is that a high school diploma does *NOT* demonstrate that, then we are worse off than I imagined.
“What in the hell does a high school diploma demonstrate?” would be my next (naïve) question.
I have to go against my federalist instincts on this one. I don’t care what standards a district, private school, or homeschooler has, we need a certificate that proves basic competency. You may not know where Montana is or whether it has more people than New Jersey (and I still don’t think you should get a diploma if you don’t), but something that says you have enough knowledge to figure it out.
A fishin’ Klansman would say that removing standards will help non-white kids. And you know what, if students don’t have math and language proficiency by the middle of 11th grade, the school system was failing all along.
Your second statement is definitely true.
Reading this, I immediately flashed back to “What is the point of Lower Education?” and looking at the removal of standards has me asking that again.
Removing the standards makes sense if the point of Lower Education is to provide middle-class jobs to teachers.
Or childcare to working families.
They’re shooting the messenger. The tests will show racial disparities, so clearly the answer is to get rid of the tests.
Well, that’s a whole lot easier than, you know, addressing and remediating racial disparities. You try that, they castigate you on FOX News for teaching Critical Race Theory and irresponsible profligate and corrupt social welfare spending.
And god forbid that you talk about marriage, having children too early and/or out of wedlock.
This doesn’t make any sense. Nobody derides trying to do a better job of teaching black and indigenous children as CRT. What they do deride as CRT (and rightly so, because it really is a CRT-inspired idea) is the idea that standardized testing should be abolished because racial gaps in test scores prove that it’s racist. So you’re basically saying that in order to avoid being accused of promoting CRT, they’re promoting CRT instead of doing a thing that isn’t CRT and which nobody is claiming is CRT.
As for addressing and remediating racial gaps in academic achievement, what exactly do you propose that hasn’t already been tried and which hasn’t been failing for decades?
The War on Messengers is definitely a thing, but it’s important to note that, since a disproportionate share of black and indigenous students who graduated in previous years were just barely squeaking by, the hit to learning from school closures will likely have a particularly pronounced effect on their ability to pass the graduation test, for reasons largely outside of their control.
Yes, graduating students who didn’t learn the material is bad, but so is holding back students who fail because of school closures. Realistically, students generally don’t use most of what they learn in the last year or two of school anyway, unless they go on to higher education.
I suspect that it does make some sense to waive or at least relax the test for the students most heavily impacted by the closures. It’s the lesser of two evils, but really, who takes high school diplomas seriously these days anyway? Getting a diploma is like 10% learning and 90% sitting in the chair for 13 years as it is.
That said, I don’t expect them to reinstate it. They’re going to get accustomed to not having that pesky messenger around.
If you’re going to have some high school graduated kids who can’t read, then you can’t complain if employers assume that they all can’t read.
I hear you but what you’re saying takes for granted the assumption that many (most?) public school systems aren’t willing or capable of solving problems. Instead of meeting challenges they make bureaucratic decisions that whatever it is doesn’t actually exist. That’s the take away I’ve had as a parent over the last 18 months.
The big problem isn’t the politicians getting used to this. It’s everyone else getting used to it. The political class is assuming they can change things without anyone else changing their actions.
It’s already really hard to educate this sub-class. When we sharply lower incentives, is everyone really going to continue at their current rate of “success”? Won’t everyone try less hard, won’t outright failures go up, and won’t bad actors move to places where there isn’t any pushback?
The expectation should be that the quality of education in these areas goes sharply down. Maybe not right away but it’s going to vector in the wrong direction and no one will notice.
I can’t decide if I think destroying the metric and therefore any sort of accountability has been the goal from the outset or if it’s just the natural byproduct of ideology. Either way the taxpayer is the loser, as always.
The gov doesn’t want to be held accountable.
Especially for something that’s hard and where people have unrealistic ideas on what success looks like.
The system has two kids. Kid “A” has two married parents who are rich and focused on making “A” a success at school. Kid “B” has one parent who isn’t rich and doesn’t have the bandwidth (and/or interest) in that.
It is wildly unrealistic to think both those kids have the same percentage chance for educational success (or success in general). The gov’s schools could improve B, even do a better job than they did with A, and still have the outcome that A does better than B.
here(PDF) is a link to the bill as passed.
(only 2 pages really, the third is for signature blocks)
(from here – https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2021R1/Measures/Overview/SB744)
I can definitely see why CRT or DEI or whatever inspired pedagogy is so popular in academia. Can’t meet a standard? No problem!. Just call it racist and eliminate it altogether.