Far-left Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has quietly and deceitfully signed a private bill last month ending the requirement for high school students in the state to learn to read and write before graduation.
Gov. Brown, a Democrat, did not hold a public signing or issue a press release or any other information about the passing of Senate Bill 744 on July 14, and the bill, which was approved by lawmakers last month, was not added into the state’s legislative database until July 29, an unusually secretive approach to enacting legislation, according to the Oregonian.
The secretive and deceitful Senate Bill means Oregonian high school graduates no longer have to read and write to graduate, as critics claim Democrats are deliberately “dumbing down” our children, leaving them unprepared for further education and work.
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Predictably, the governor blamed Covid-19 for the move to reset Oregon’s academic standards. Per Washington Examiner:
“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.”
The requirement for students to demonstrate proficiency in essential subjects on a freshman to sophomore skill level in order to graduate was terminated at the start of the pandemic as part of Brown’s Stay Home, Save Lives order in March 2020.
Democrats largely backed the executive order and argued in favor of SB 744’s proposed expansion, saying the existing educational proficiency standards were flawed.
“The testing that we’ve been doing in the past doesn’t tell us what we want to know,” Democratic Sen. Lew Frederick told a local ABC affiliate in June. “We have been relying on tests that have been, frankly, very flawed and relying too much on them so that we aren’t really helping the students or the teachers or the community.”
Supporters of the measure said the state needed to pause the academic requirements, which had been in place since 2009, so lawmakers could reevaluate which standards should be updated, and recommendations for new graduation standards are due to the Legislature and Oregon Board of Education by September 2022, the Oregonian added in its report.
Republicans criticized the proposal for lowering academic standards.
“I worry that by adopting this bill, we’re giving up on our kids,” House Republican Leader Christine Drazan said on June 14.
Still, the measure received some bipartisan support, with state Rep. Gordon Smith, a Republican, voting in favor of passage. The state House passed the bill 38-18 on June 14, and the state Senate voted 16-13 in favor of the measure on June 16.
While some lawmakers argued against standardized testing for skill evaluation, the state of Oregon does not list any particular test as a requirement for earning a diploma, with the Department of Education saying only that “students will need to successfully complete the credit requirements, demonstrate proficiency in the Essential Skills, and meet the personalized learning requirements.”
“Senate Bill 744 does not remove Oregon’s graduation requirements, and it certainly does not remove any requirements that Oregon students learn essential skills,” Boyle said, adding it is “misleading” to conflate the subjects of standardized testing with graduation requirements.
Baxter Dmitry
Email: baxter@thepeoplesvoice.tv
The old system was flawed giving too much emphasis on literary skills which is a specific brain function and not enough to other areas Many people, for example Judy Garland, one of the most talented singer dancer actresses ever, couldn’t read a note of music and never had a singing lesson in her life.
Many creative artistic people geniuses even in their fields can be dyslexic for example and undervalued in consequence and many people very loquacious in their jargons and verbal diaohreas can be absolutely simple minded in reality
Time to go back to home schooling and shut down the entire school system if this is what they call teaching or getting an education. Let the teachers who really want to teach and educated a child start little private schools. No more of this public BS–just a waste of tax dollars.
Why should they have to? Their governor can do neither.
10,000 B.C., Humans learned to write. 2022 A.D. in Oregon, people there cease to read and write.
Stop watch movies. There is NO 10.000 B.C.
Oh?
Numerous studies have shown that kids now have lower IQs due to masks/covid shutdowns. LIttle children aren’t getting
socialized and don’t see their parent’s facial expressions so they don’t learn to read expressions and alot of learning
doesn’t happen. IQs are at least 10 pts lower and often, even more than 10 pts lower. So now the are dumbing
down our kids and destroying their brains. If a child doesn’t learn to read when they are young, it is much, much harder
to learn to read at a later age and they end up illiterate.
So much for obastards ebonics.
No Read or Write, so exactly like Obama’s. In their Image.