In 2020, citing the learning gap caused by the pandemic, the state suspended its graduation requirements to help students. Now, the Oregon Board of Education has decided to keep that suspension in place for another five years, which means students will not be required to demonstrate basic skills in reading, writing, and/or math to graduate.
The given reason: To avoid harming and marginalizing students of color.
"This is disgraceful," responds Nicholas Giordano, a political science professor and a fellow at Campus Reform's Higher Education Fellowship. "Every education official should be ashamed of themselves."
He says there is no upside to this "insulting" and "completely ridiculous" reasoning.
"It's also racist to assume that people of color can't perform as well as their white counterparts," he adds.
Giordano submits this is a cover-up of the system's failures, and in his opinion, it displays the need for the U.S. education system to be overturned.
Melanie Collette, an ambassador with Project 21, likewise calls it "ridiculous" and insists it does not help students; "it actually does the opposite."
In her training as an educator, she recalls being told that people with more melanin needed figurative crutches, and that is one reason why she is no longer an educator.
"The Marxists in the public school system are constantly telling the powers that be that black people need more assistance, that the markers for them to meet are actually white supremacist markers," Collette reports. "Math is white supremacy; proper English is white supremacy."
She says the public school system is peddling "an insidious form of racism.
"It's an insidious plan by the leftist elites to keep black people ignorant, uneducated, and to have control of them ultimately," Collette submits.
So even though the situation in Oregon is not particularly surprising to her, she admits it is "really incredible" to see that "they're codifying their racism into law and that they've successfully indoctrinated all of these teachers to think the same thing."
But comparing this to the open southern border, which like-minded leftists think will give them more people to control, Collette thinks they are overshooting their boundaries.
"I don't think it's going to turn out the way they anticipate," she concludes.
