Woke Oregon school chiefs suspend need for high schoolers to prove math, reading and writing skills to graduate for FIVE MORE YEARS – to bolster minority students who ‘don’t test well’
- The State Board of Education ruled that students no longer need to meet an essential skills requirement to graduate
- To earn a degree, graduating students previously had to achieve standardized test scores that indicated proficiency in reading, writing and math
School principals in Oregon have once again suspended the need for high school students to prove their math, reading and writing skills in order to graduate.
The State Board of Education voted last week to continue the suspension for another five years amid claims that they are unfair to minority students who do not test well.
To earn a degree, graduating students previously had to achieve standardized test scores that indicated proficiency in reading, writing and arithmetic.
But this was put on hold during the pandemic as no standardized testing took place during school closures.
Following a unanimous vote by the Oregon State Board of Education last week, the requirement will not be in effect for at least five years.
At a meeting in September, Guadalupe Martinez Zapata, chairman of the State Council of Education, compared the rhetoric about underachievement of marginalized students to “arguments for racial superiority.”
Oregon students (pictured) will no longer have to prove their proficiency in reading, writing and math to graduate – at least not until 2029
The skills requirement has been suspended again under Governor Tina Kotek, who began her term this year
Opponents of the essential skills requirement argued that it harms students of color, students with disabilities and students learning English as a second language.
These groups often had to take extra math and writing classes in their senior year to prove that they deserved to graduate.
But board members emphasized that state-mandated standardized tests will still be administered to most Oregon high school students — they just won’t be used to determine whether a student has the skills needed to graduate.
“The only thing we’re suspending is the inappropriate use of the way those assessments were used,” board member Vicky López Sánchez, a dean at Portland Community College, said during Thursday’s meeting.
“I think this is really in the best interest of Oregon students.” Hundreds of people submitted public comments urging the board to reinstate the standards.
But board chairman Guadalupe Martinez Zapata described the backlash as a “campaign of misinformation.”
At a meeting in September, she compared “rhetoric about cultural and social norms as the underlying reason for underperformance on assessments by systemically marginalized students” to “arguments about racial superiority.”
“It’s not bigoted, it’s not racist to want your student to actually be able to learn,” former gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan told FOX News.
The skills requirement was originally suspended under Governor Kate Brown, who passed a bill to freeze them during the pandemic
Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan says it’s “not racist” to want students to learn
Drazan ran for governor last year and lost to Democrat Tina Kotek by less than 4% of the vote.
The overhaul of skills requirements is part of a larger problem, she said, as education officials are now considering “equity grading” instead of the traditional A to F scale.
“They’re now moving forward with an agenda that says if you cheat, you can’t get failed. If you don’t show up, you don’t get a zero,” she said.
“They don’t get graded homework because they see it as unfair in some way.”