Education Officials Declare: Oregon's Black & Brown Students Are Too Stupid To Learn

Road To Serfdom

The Oregon Board of Education voted unanimously last week to continue the 2020 suspension of the most important high school graduation requirements, the Oregonian, the state’s largest newspaper, reported.  During their exist assessment to receive their high school diplomas, students will no longer be required to prove basic mastery of reading, writing, or math, by far the most important skills needed in adult life.

Graduation requirements were informally cancelled during the lockdown, which former state Governor Kate Brown (D) mandated beginning in March 2020. Then, in 2021, she made the lower standards state law by signing Senate Bill 744, which 1) suspended skills testing amid the two-year unconstitutional COVID lockdown, and 2) required the Department of Education to report back with a more “equitable” (AKA racist) plan by September 1, 2023.

Prior to the changes, high school students were required to demonstrate essential skills for graduation. Under the now suspended rule, 11th-grade students needed to demonstrate competency in essential skills reading, writing, and math through either a standardized test or a portfolio of work on top of regular coursework.  Students who failed to demonstrate proficiency in the essential skills were to make up for it in their senior year to graduate.

LESS TIME TO INDOCTRINATE STUDENTS 

The suspension will continue until at least 2029 despite dozens of community members submitting public comments in favor of reinstating the requirements. According to the board, the assessments were harming students of color and those with disabilities, KTVL reported.  Put another way, the board believes the racist notion that “black” and “brown” students, as well as those with disabilities, are too stupid to learn how to read & write, and to learn basic math.

According to proponents of suspending the graduation requirements, higher rates of students of color, students learning English as a second language and students with disabilities ended up having to take intensive senior-year writing and math classes to prove they deserved a diploma. That denied those students the opportunity to take an elective, they claimed.*

Dan Farley, the Oregon Department of Education assistant superintendent, said, “The ways that students met the requirements, the types of diplomas that they got could all be predicted by race, ethnicity, IEP status, multilingual learner status. We have to do what we can to disrupt those basically racist outcomes.”

Allow me to translate that for you: Reading, writing & math, extremely important skills to be successful in adult life, are less important than learning about climate change, than learning that “whites” are oppressors and “blacks” are oppressed, than boys learning they were not really born boys, than learning “diversity, equity & inclusion,” etc. Besides, “black” and “brown” kids are too stupid to learn reading, writing & math, anyway.

Critics of the board’s decision expressed concern that dropping the exit assessment will devalue the state’s high school diploma for ALL graduates and assures low-performing students of all skin hues will populate the serfdom class the Ruling Elite is creating. Can’t allow “thinkers:”

*I resided in and practiced law in Oregon until December 2020. By 2000 or so I started to notice that younger high school graduates did not have the reading, writing & math skills that older generations had. I firmly believe the racist notion being used to justify lowering education standards is merely a way to hide the gross incompetence of teachers and administrators. Keeping facts from parents and the public ensures they can maintain their overpaid, underperforming jobs longer.