OR Legislature passes SB 744 to get rid of math and reading proficiency standards for high schools (Portland: mortgages, credit card)

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

Exactly. I've actually taught remedial classes for students who failed standardized tests. There is no remediation "go back over the basics one more time" to any of it. It is all test prep like taking an SAT test prep class. Get the kids just enough test prep to get over the bar and the forget about it after that. It's a complete waste of time.

And honestly, all this effort and angst was just for a very narrow subset of the student population. Most students in the top 75% or so (in terms of test taking skills, not necessarily grades) pass the standardized tests easily. Another 5 or 10% are learning disabled or special ed students who are not going to pass no matter how much drill you do. They simply aren't. And most get excused from the tests anyway.

That leaves about 10% of kids who are "on the bubble" for whom passing the test is going to be touch-and-go. Maybe half of them will pass it in the first or second try which leaves about 5% for whom you really have to struggle. Is it really in the student and state's interest to yank them out of elective classes that they might actually like, that might be career-oriented and the reason they actually like to come to school in the first place to put them into tests drill classes just to get 3 or 5 more multiple choice questions right on the next test? Who does that serve other than the "testing industrial complex" which is composed of companies like Pearson, which is not even an American company, but a UK conglomerate designed to extract billions of tax dollars from American school districts.

I think you touched on something unintentionally-every single school reform, every single one, has been aimed at the lowest performing 20% of the students (Ok, I'll grant that in some school systems it's 40%), some of whom are inter-generational underachievers. I taught a number of those over the years and was at the same school long enough to have the children of the earlier ones.

[Kid Ashbury]

UPDATE: Kate Brown just signed this into law. Students will no longer need to demonstrate they can read, write or do math to graduate Oregon high schools.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by Kid Ashbury

UPDATE: Kate Brown just signed this into law. Students will no longer need to demonstrate they can read, write or do math to graduate Oregon high schools.

Sure they will. In order to graduate they will still need to pass:

Four years of HS English
Three years of HS social studies
Three years of HS math
Three years of HS science

That will involve many dozens of ELA, math, and science tests over the course of a 4-year HS career along with thousands of ELA, math, and science class assignments.

What the state is no longer going to do is require the additional passage of various standardized tests that cost millions to administer and are a total waste of time for all involved and are more of a cash cow for the giant testing companies than anything useful to education. The largest test company in the US is Pearson, which had revenues of $3.397 Billion in 2020 much of it earned from US taxpayers administering standardized testing in the US that is of zero educational benefit to teachers or students. And Pearson isn't even a US company, it is British.

[Kid Ashbury]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

Sure they will. In order to graduate they will still need to pass:

Four years of HS English
Three years of HS social studies
Three years of HS math
Three years of HS science

That will involve many dozens of ELA, math, and science tests over the course of a 4-year HS career along with thousands of ELA, math, and science class assignments.

What the state is no longer going to do is require the additional passage of various standardized tests that cost millions to administer and are a total waste of time for all involved and are more of a cash cow for the giant testing companies than anything useful to education. The largest test company in the US is Pearson, which had revenues of $3.397 Billion in 2020 much of it earned from US taxpayers administering standardized testing in the US that is of zero educational benefit to teachers or students. And Pearson isn't even a US company, it is British.

100% False. Teachers in Oregon public schools had free will to pass students at will, and Oregon did not require students to pass standardized testing even before this bill was signed. I'm not sure if you're ignorant about that or just lying and hoping no one noticed, but either way you're wrong.

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/...-about-it.html

Much of the criticism of the graduation requirements was targeted at standardized tests. Yet Oregon, unlike many other states, did not require students to pass a particular standardized test or any test at all. Students could demonstrate their ability to use English and do math via about five different tests or by completing an in-depth classroom project judged by their own teachers.

Also, its very telling that the governor didn't have a signing ceremony for this bill and is actively dodging reporters trying to ask her questions about it. As she hides, her deputy communications director says that signing the bill will help “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color", which seems to insinuate he thinks only Whites can pass basic literacy and mathematics tests.

Interesting stuff!

[texasdiver]

Here is a non-paywalled description of the bill. It is a 3-year suspension in the testing requirement brought on by the pandemic. And it was indeed a standardized testing requirement with an out that students complete a big alternative project: https://katu.com/news/local/oregon-l...ng-requirement

[slowlanes]

Originally Posted by Kid Ashbury

..

Which begs the question: what other standards do you think Oregon should suspend because not all races of people do as well as the rest on average?

'not all races do as well'...well that's the most racist statement I've heard on this forum in quite a while.

If a Latino child, and the parents don't speak much English and are uneducated and cannot help their child with homework, pretty likely the child will not be a good test taker during their early years, or ever.
If a white child, and the parents are uneducated or have abuse issues and cannot help their child with homework, pretty likely the child will not be a good test taker during their early years, or ever.
Schools aren't designed to direct their teaching efforts at the best and brightest students who will always succeed good regardless of their race.
Schools are designed to meet the needs of the average student and hopefully with the resources to help those for who school is a constant struggle, as that diploma will make a huge difference in the eventual outcome of their life's journey.

And from someone who worked in education at the college level for a coupla decades...tests are the easy way for teachers and systems to meet standards which have little to do with the quality of the education itself, which always comes down to the teachers ability to reach and inform their students.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by slowlanes

'not all races do as well'...well that's the most racist statement I've heard on this forum in quite a while.

If a Latino child, and the parents don't speak much English and are uneducated and cannot help their child with homework, pretty likely the child will not be a good test taker during their early years, or ever.
If a white child, and the parents are uneducated or have abuse issues and cannot help their child with homework, pretty likely the child will not be a good test taker during their early years, or ever.
Schools aren't designed to direct their teaching efforts at the best and brightest students who will always succeed good regardless of their race.
Schools are designed to meet the needs of the average student and hopefully with the resources to help those for who school is a constant struggle, as that diploma will make a huge difference in the eventual outcome of their life's journey.

And from someone who worked in education at the college level for a coupla decades...tests are the easy way for teachers and systems to meet standards which have little to do with the quality of the education itself, which always comes down to the teachers ability to reach and inform their students.

Back when I taught in Texas I had one bright Hispanic immigrant kid who was in the cohort for the standardized and mandatory ELA test that I was administering that day. His English was OK but not adequate to easily do things like complicated textual analysis of themes, irony, sarcasm, etc. in older literary texts. It is one thing to speak English as a second language. It is something else to dissect the complicated and often archaic language of Shakespeare, Melville, Dickins, Bronte, etc. He also happened to have a broken wrist on his right hand from a soccer accident so was forced to write with his left hand. This particular test was untimed and dictionaries were allowed. That poor kid sat their for 8 hours meticulously working on his test, tying to look up words in the dictionary with one hand and then writing with the same hand. I told him he could just bag it but he was determined to finish. And to what end? The result just went down into a rabbit hole of data that served no particular purpose except to enrich the testing industry. You only have so many days of instruction per year. That was one day we just sat on fire and wasted.

[karlsch]

Originally Posted by Kid Ashbury

Also, its very telling that the governor didn't have a signing ceremony for this bill and is actively dodging reporters trying to ask her questions about it. As she hides, her deputy communications director says that signing the bill will help “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color", which seems to insinuate he thinks only Whites can pass basic literacy and mathematics tests.

Interesting stuff!

Yes, the Asians students need extra help.

They are the inconvenient ones who are creating problems for the woke by hogging all the positions at highly selective schools everywhere.

[redguard57]

Right wing media is making a fuss over this bureaucratic change that really doesn't do much, and saves money. The media is leaving out:

Anyone who didn't want to take the OAKS test didn't have to, and any teacher who didn't want to administer it could opt out the entire class.

The OAKS test wasn't very good. It was a random test that did not align with what many classes were doing, especially in 11th grade.

It could not be delivered evenly because of covid, so it was cancelled. This was going to be the third year it was cancelled.

It was an NCLB requirement and everyone hated NCLB. So why are they so upset about this test?

The right wing media would never have picked up on this if Gov. Brown had not done the virtue signalling about race/social justice. She could have avoided all this by not saying that.

[karlsch]

Originally Posted by redguard57

Right wing media is making a fuss over this bureaucratic change that really doesn't do much, and saves money. The media is leaving out:

.........

Just as it wasn't only the "right wing media" making a fuss over the riots and violence in Portland, it isn't only the right wing media reporting on this - I have seen it everywhere.