Oregon law suspends graduation testing requirement

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The oft-used rallying cry of the Left is to abolish institutions or systems to allegedly level the playing field between social and economic classes and groups, such as racial minorities or the poor. The Left’s latest victory is suspending graduation testing requirements in Oregon.

Senate Bill 744, passed along partisan lines by a Democratic supermajority in the state legislature, suspends basic skills tests in mathematics, reading, and writing. For students to graduate, they must pass these tests.

Democratic Gov. Kate Brown signed the bill into law in August and these tests are suspended until the 2022-2023 school year. Although these tests were placed on hold during the coronavirus pandemic, it was expected that these tests would resume once the pandemic ended.

Oregon’s Department of Education claimed that the new law will permit state education bureaucrats to create equitable graduation requirements, which involves comparison of Oregon’s standards to other states. Another part of their work will include methods to reduce disparities among its students while ensuring that the graduation requirements are fair to all students.

One activist, Rashelle Chase of Mxm Bloc, told the Associated Press that the graduation exams harmed racial minorities, special needs students, early language learners and low-income students. Chase said, “Under the best of circumstances, in totally normal times with no pandemic, there are a number of children who don’t test well.”

Mxm Bloc is an activist group that focuses on education and social justice issues, which is Leftist code for left-wing activism. There is no active, publicly-available site for the group, which is typical of secretive, Leftist groups. Also, the group is a loud supporter of Black Lives Matter and helped organized at least one sit-in protest in Portland, Oregon.

For years, the Left defined equality in education in ways such as lowering education standards and testing criteria, abolishing valedictorian status for high-achieving students, and enacting affirmative action policies which tend to exclude Asian-Americans and white Americans. In Oregon, it has taken hold of the state education bureaucracy and could dumb down standards further.