There was an interesting article this week out of Oregon where a parental rights group is slamming that state’s department of education for continually kicking the can down the road in implementing more stringent graduation requirements.
COVID-19, of course, served as the pretext to suspend a lot of requirements, mostly when it comes to standardized test results, but long after the pandemic’s worst wave that state is still evaluating its testing policies.
It’s disappointing, but it’s no surprise they are leaning toward a more relaxed set of standards that could take effect five years from now.
As a former educator, I have myself at times decried the focus schools place on standardized tests.
But it’s not really the fault of the tests.
State education boards, principals and teachers often bring a lot of issues upon themselves by voluntarily placing an unbalanced amount of focus on preparing students for standardized tests.
The focus became so fixed decades ago that many teachers find little joy in the profession anymore.
“Let us just teach and do our jobs,” they say.
For decades, the government forced standardized tests down our throats, to the point that they were feared and detested by all who walked the halls of a school building.
Those tests, not the actual education of children, became the obsession of just about every educator in America.
And now the pendulum appears to be swinging the other way.
Government is now telling us that those tests are not only unimportant, but in the case of Oregon, the state is telling us the tests negatively affect low-income and minority students to the point that they should essentially be a non-factor in graduation standards.
As long as these tests become less important, you won’t hear many complaints from teachers and students.
But society might come to regret this diluting of standards where students can now identify as proficient.
It will wash out during the first year of college, where tens of millions of dollars are already being spent on remediation each year.
College professors will tell you how much standards have been diluted at the post-secondary level already.
It will further wash out in the workforce where companies need labor to be prepared for work with at least basic reading, writing and math skills.
Teachers came to hate standardized tests because the obsession broke the spirit of good educators.
Now the state hates them because it is politically correct to do so.
But the tests themselves are fairly sound.
There’s little on a high school English state test that should not have been learned in the classroom from August to April. The same goes for history, biology and algebra.
Teachers will probably be happy with a little less obsession over the tests, but students will suffer immensely from caring zero about them.
