Greetings From Oregon, Where Johnny Might Not Be Able To Read This

It's OK; 'readin', writin', and 'rithmetic aren't big deals, anyway...right?? Hoo needz edumication??

For the next five years, an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level.

Gov. Kate Brown had demurred earlier this summer regarding whether she supported the plan passed by the Legislature to drop the requirement that students demonstrate they have achieved those essential skills. But on July 14, the governor signed Senate Bill 744 into law….

Brown’s decision was not public until recently, because her office did not hold a signing ceremony or issue a press release and the fact that the governor signed the bill was not entered into the legislative database until July 29, a departure from the normal practice of updating the public database the same day a bill is signed.

If there’s one thing the COVID-19 pandemic has taught me, it’s that no matter how odd things seem, there’s something stranger just around the corner. Because of this, I’ve given up trying to understand much of life as I did before. There’s simply no template, no frame of reference that I possess to make sense out of life, the universe, or much of anything since February 2020.

All things considered, we’re pretty fortunate here in Oregon. No, I should probably reframe that. We’re pretty fortunate here in the Willamette Valley. The rest of the state could be (and, in some cases, wants to be) West Idaho. I live in Portland, the most populous city in Oregon, and Multnomah County, which contains Portland, is, as of Monday, August 9th, 74.9% fully vaccinated. Call us the anti-Floriduh. People here have taken the pandemic seriously since Day One, and while we’ve had our complaints (who hasn’t?), we’ve done what we needed to do.

This is one reason I was so surprised that Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill removing any requirement that Oregon’s high school graduates be able to do basic math, reading, or writing at a high school level. The bill removes these standards for the next five years.

It’s conceivable that we may be sending graduating high school seniors out into the world knowing that they can’t read, write, or do basic math. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a HUGE failure on the part of Oregon’s edumication system.

Don’t even get me started on the property taxes we pay to support education here in the Beaver State….

That Gov. Brown signed this bill without any of the usual fanfare- press release, signing ceremony, updating the public database- seems odd, as if this was something that was supposed to slide by unnoticed.

It almost did.

But while I’m trying not to overreact, graduation requirements seem like the sort of thing we should really have a public discussion about. Are we really OK with sending kids out into the world even as they might not be prepared to meet the requirements of the marketplace they encounter?

What about those graduating seniors who might have aspirations of going on to college? If our graduation standards aren’t going to hold students to even the most minimal of standards, how can we have any faith that they’ll succeed in college? How can out-of-state colleges and universities have reason to believe that little Johnny will make it in a higher education environment?

If you read the article, you’ll understand that this is about standardized testing and other education issues. It’s probably not quite as simple as I’m making it sound, but this shouldn’t be something that becomes law under cover of darkness. That Gov. Brown seems to be throwing out the baby AND the bathwater should cause considerable alarm.

Replacing graduation standards with no standards at all isn’t a good look, especially when one considers the prevailing opinion of our public schools. There may well be legitimate reasons for Gov. Brown signing this bill. If that’s the case, why was it done in a manner intended not to attract attention?

This seems like the sort of thing we should be having a serious conversation about, not trying to slide under the radar in the hopes no one notices. Reading, writing, and math aren’t optional skills that one will never use in life, like Latin, Biology, or building a thermonuclear weapon. If you can’t communicate on a basic level or make change, what hope do you have of tackling any career path more complex than pumping gas with any degree of success?

(Yes, that’s still a thing in Oregon…because we’re the last state in the union that doesn’t allow motorists to pump their own gas. Unless they’re in the middle of nowhere, that is.)

I’ve met Gov. Brown. She doesn’t impress me as a sneaky, calculating politician…but this one’s a head-scratcher. In an era in which Oregon’s economy is increasingly reliant on high-tech, are we really dragging our kids back to the early ‘80s? That’s when still timber ruled the Beaver State…until it didn’t, which was the mid-’80s. So what is it that we’re preparing Oregon’s children for?

Have we really given up on edumicating our children? Or are we more concerned with just pushing them out into the world as soon as they turn 18? ‘Cuz Lord knows we need more bored young kids holding traffic signs at construction sites….