High School testing sets bar at lowest level for 'essential skill' in Oregon

High school kids in Oregon don't need to know how to read, write or do math anymore. Their standardized testing scores began to fall continued to plummet in 2017 and fewer than 50 percent of students who took the math portion of the test passed. Only 53 percent passed the reading exam. So the solution for school officials wasn't to teach better, it was to lower expectations. Well, expectations have been lowered so much, they basically don't exist anymore.

Senate Bill 744 orders a review of state graduation requirements and does not require Oregon students in the classes of 2022, 2023 and 2024 to show proficiency in Essential Learning Skills in order to graduate. So rather than providing graduates with a mortarboard and diploma, students will get a dunce cap with a selfie of themselves standing next to the principal. 

The recent law passed the Oregon Legislature in June with a little testimony both for and against the bill.

However, about a month after its signing, newspaper articles and editorials started highlighting the bill, saying Oregon students don’t have to prove they can read, write, or do math to graduate. A Wall Street Journal editorial writes the bill is “Dumbing Oregon Down”.

It started in Oregon before blowing up to national and international coverage. Oregon House Minority leader Christine Drazen appeared on Fox News to talk about it. 

Conservative critics called the bill a misguided effort to support underserved students, [aka the soft bigotry of low expectation].

“Politicians and school officials in Oregon are embarrassed that too many minority children fail tests designed to confirm they’ve mastered the ‘essential skills’ that high school is meant to teach,” said WSJ in its editorial. “So in the name of racial equity, they’ve now done the progressive thing.”

The real problem is that their virtue signaling policy of "everyone gets a trophy" is failing to arm graduates with the requisites they need in order to succeed in the real world.

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Did MAGA hat scare away an entire class of high school kids on teacher's direction?

A high school "teacher" may have actually had his entire class of students leave the classroom because one scary student was wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat, according to the YouTube video below.

The video was originally posted on The Daily Caller, and it features audio of what is allegedly the teacher and the student arguing, reportedly recorded by one of the students in the classroom.

The teacher's voice is a drone that could put a methamphetamine user to sleep.

“You’re putting me in a position where I’m either going to gather everybody up and go to another classroom and you can remain here like an a**hole, or you can take your hat off, or you can go talk to an AP about it,” a voice, reportedly the teacher, can be heard saying. “Now, what do you want to do?”

“I can’t sit here and learn?” another voice, reportedly belonging to the student who was wearing the hat, asks.

“Not with that hat on,” the teacher allegedly responds.

And on and on it goes. The alleged student pushes back with "Don't we have a freedom to expression and a freedom to education?” to which the teacher allegedly replies, “I don’t care,” and tells the student to choose whether to stay with the hat on and no class, or remove the hat and the others will stay in the classroom.

The student allegedly replied that he wanted to “sit here and learn,” which prompted the teacher to allegedly respond that the class was “going to go elsewhere then” before students can be seen gathering their backpacks and reportedly beginning to leave the classroom.

The teacher makes a comment about the fact that there are rules against hats — which makes it possible that the actual problem was that the student was wearing a hat in general, not with the fact that the student was wearing a MAGA hat in particular. 

But at another point in the video, a voice reportedly belonging to another student insinuates that the MAGA hat is “racist,” which makes it seem as though the problem with the hat was that it was a hat in support of Donald Trump. Still, however, those were not the words uttered by the alleged teacher.

In any case, evacuating a class over a student wearing a hat is a ridiculous and absurd response. The teacher could have used the time as a learning moment by discussing either rules and why hats are not to be worn in class, or to discuss why wearing a MAGA hat, in particular, should not be worn, or even what the teacher sees wrong about Trump--but in an educational way, not a proselytizing way.

Here's a fact: other people have different political views than you do. If we don't respect our differences, are we any better than actual racists of fascists? 

Identity politics has gotten out of hand. "The other" should not be viewed as "the enemy."

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