OR Legislature passes SB 744 to get rid of math and reading proficiency standards for high schools (Portland: school district, community college)

[slowlanes]

The irony behind all of this...our school system is based on an 18th centry European model that most of Europe has moved on from.
To wit...in the Scandanavian countries, where I worked projects for 6 years after leaving higher education, and had many a dinner conversation at the homes of the various folks I worked with including their kids, were very positive about their education system, which is function based vs. our memorization models.
For example, students in 6th grade are taught how to balance checkbooks and manage money.
High school is 3 years long with two tracks to choose from, vocational or educational.. And their college programs are half of ours, undergrad degree in two years, a master can be gained in another year.
And since their colleges and universities are free, the intent is to offer focused study that will graduate them with zero fluff requirements.
What struck me the most in my time there was how focused the kids were on their education and their future, one reason beside the qualitry of the education is their track to educated adulthood which is much faster than here in the US.
In the US, two years for an AA degree, four years for an undergraduate degree, masters (my wife has two) another two years. And why? Becuase the pensions and operating budgets completely rely on student tuition, whereas in the Scando countries it is paid for through the tax revenue system.
This state, this country doesn't need to change testing, it needs to change the entire teaching model to be based on educating our kids, not supporting academic instituitions.

[karlsch]

SB 744: THE FINAL SOLUTION TO THE TEST SCORE QUESTION.

There have been group differences in standardized test results since the time they were first given. The different results are evident in IQ tests, the SAT, the ACT, the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, the NFL Wonderlic, the international PISA exams, and all the countless others.

It was this way before there were any test-prep courses, which are sometimes used to explain away the differences.

Not even the billions and billions spent on No Child Left Behind in the United States changed anything.

Some pragmatic multi-ethnic, multi-racial nations, such as Singapore with its education system that produces great results, recognize that group differences are inevitable, and instead of wasting time trying to eliminate them, just make a great effort to educate all of their students. As Lee Kuan Yew once said to his lower achieving: “.............. I’m not God, I can’t change you. But I can encourage you, give you extra help to make you do, say, maybe 20% better.”

Oregon's brilliant solution to the “problem” is to eliminate the tests.

All this will do is further devalue the worth of a high school diploma. And to make sure applicants actually know how to read, write and do arithmetic, more employers than ever will now require costly college degrees for jobs that previously required only an “earned” high school diploma.

[jetgraphics]

Makes perfect sense...
The teachers are incompetent and ignorant, so they cannot effectively teach skills to the next generation.
The government approved curriculum is abysmal.
And the next generation of illiterates and ignoramuses will be the future teachers, and will carry on the tradition of lowering standards.
- - - or- - -
Let's just stop funding "public education" and let parents choose the schooling they desire for their children, instead of the glorious collective State.

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by karlsch

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.

Pretty much anyone right wing wants to make Portland or Oregon into their punching bag. How would you like it if I insulted the place where YOU live?

I like how you ignored everything I said about the 11th grade OAKS test being a redundancy, and having little to do with the problems Oregon schools have. The state just changed it from opt-out to opt-in. A lot of districts will still administer it. Some won't.

What do you care? If it makes Oregon students so unprepared, then our students will be uncompetitive at the national level for jobs. What skin is that off your nose?

But it will not, because the test was redundant and unnecessary.

[Silverfall]

Originally Posted by karlsch

All this will do is further devalue the worth of a high school diploma. And to make sure applicants actually know how to read, write and do arithmetic, more employers than ever will now require costly college degrees for jobs that previously required only an “earned” high school diploma.

I know I didn't have to pass a test like the SBAC to graduate from high school and I did just fine. You had to pass a test like the SBAC to graduate from high school?

[karlsch]

Originally Posted by Silverfall

I know I didn't have to pass a test like the SBAC to graduate from high school and I did just fine. You had to pass a test like the SBAC to graduate from high school?

When I graduated, standards were much higher. An additional test was not necessary to prove that students deserved their diploma.

[leastprime]

Maybe there won't be so many redundant achievement tests.

[Silverfall]

Originally Posted by karlsch

When I graduated, standards were much higher. An additional test was not necessary to prove that students deserved their diploma.

The standards weren't higher when you graduated. They were different, but not higher. You must not have any recent kids in high school if you honestly believe that the SBAC offered any kind of value or proved competence. It was a complete waste of taxpayer money and time.

I graduated in 1987 and students now are required to take more higher-level academic classes than when I graduated. When I graduated students didn't have to pass Algebra II, for example. They had to take 3 years of math, but they could have all been lower-level math classes.

In my high school, I had 4 years of PE and not two semesters. I also had to take typing as a class and I had to take a "life skills" class where they taught us to budget, understand mortgages and credit cards, fill out a job application, etc. They also did driver ed at my high school. They don't offer those kinds of classes anymore, which is unfortunate, as I think many kids need that information. The focus is on academic, college-ready classes.

What we need is a European-style education system where there is a vocational track and college track. Salem-Keizer has a CTEC and it is bursting with kids that want to go there. Every school district should have one. My high school had shop classes, automotive classes, FFA classes because they understood that not everyone is ready or desires to go to college. The popularity of CTEC in the SK school district shows that the old-style way of doing things had value to students.

Worthless school testing is the conservative's "feel-good" policy. The left has plenty of feel-good policies too, but conservatives are obsessed with wasting taxpayer money on testing that proves nothing. It does make them feel like someone is being held accountable though. You can obviously continue to believe that it has value, but I encourage you to ask 20 real live, current teachers, whether or not they think the time spent on the SBAC improves educational outcomes/has any kind of actual meaning and I think you will find they agree with me. Worthless and it is about time that they stopped mandating them. It is a better use of taxpayer money to hire more teaching specialists to help kids that struggle, develop more CTEC high schools, lower classroom sizes, etc.

[slowlanes]

Considering that 20 % of school age children are now obese in the US, dooming them to a life with social and health issues, those PE classes were more important than realized.
Drivers ed? Important for rural kids, not so much for urban/suburb kids who are rapidly preferring Uber to not deal with the whole driving/car ownership issues.
My kids went to school in a rural area with an ever increasing Latino population that worked the local ag industry. Their kids would often show up in class without having a basic understanding of the English language, resulting in 'lost' teaching time spent trying to coax the Latino students through lessons the rest of the class had no problem with.
So it required my wife and I working with our kids individually to make sure they were up to speed on their homework and lesson understanding. Result was two kids with B.S. degrees, one with a Masters and all have 6 figure incomes from their respective professions. Not braggin, just simple fact - teaching starts at home.
A core underlying issue is the fact that school are essentially as much day care for the lower earners as education centers. World of difference between being able to stay at home with the kids during this pandemic and work on Zoom, and those who if they don't show up for work don't get paid, and can't afford actual day care to watch the kids with the schools closed.
And little indication the current will change.
Not in a top heavy capitalist structure where the billionaires and their corporatoins have gamed the system with their lobbyists and political donations to make sure they pay less tax's than their secretaries.
Think of it this way. Last year, Amazon, which has bankrupted tens of thousands of storefront bussinesses that paid tax's, generated 386 BILLION dollars last year. How much tax's did they pay? Zero, da nada, doughnut.
If they had paid tax's like those secretaries do? It would have generated over a 100 billion $ to be used in support of the social/hard infrastructure they use for free.
Instead, their clown of a CEO spent 40 million $ for a 5 minute ego romp up to low orbit.
Test taking? Yea, that's defnitely our biggest problem...

[RowingFiend]

I would never hire an Oregon graduate. I’m sure someone very stupid and woke would though. Probably a government official.