The left is truly dumbing down America’s kids.
It’s nothing new.
But based on the insane education policy recently implemented by the state of Oregon, it looks like the future of America’s already awful public school system is getting worse.
Last month, as the media just learned, Oregon’s Gov. Kate Brown quietly signed a bill that dropped the requirement that high schoolers had to prove they were proficient in reading, writing and math before they graduated.
The bill’s supporters claim that considering math and reading as essential skills all these years has been, you guessed it, unfair to kids of color who do not test well.
They claim the new bill was written “to truly reflect what every student needs to thrive in the 21st century.”
And they say that it will specifically help the state’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
Only in our upside-down and dumb world of woke politics, which assumes that only white kids can learn to read and count, could someone actually believe that the futures of kids of color will be helped by lowering education standards.
Guess those progressives in Oregon missed the 2017 movie “Hidden Figures,” the true story of the brilliant black women whose computer-like math skills helped NASA safely send John Glenn into Earth orbit – and bring him back – in 1962.
What the people in charge of Oregon are doing is sad enough.
What’s even sadder is that Fox News and a dozen conservative pundits are the only ones who seem to be outraged.
I don’t expect the liberals at CNN or the New York Times to care. But where are the kids’ parents?
Black and brown parents in Oregon and every major U.S. city who can’t afford private schools, or who are unable to homeschool their kids, should be marching and protesting and raising holy Hell with local politicians of both parties.
Black and brown communities should be voting out their school boards and demanding that schools get back to teaching the basics.
That means teaching their kids how to read, count and think – not what to think.
Most of all, though, black and brown parents should be demanding school choice, so that they are no longer forced to send their kids to the crappy public school in their designated district.
All parents should have as much choice in choosing their kids’ taxpayer-financed education as they do in choosing a car dealer or a grocery store – more actually.
Everyone would see how wrong – and stupid -- it would be if parents in poor city neighborhoods were forced by law to buy their food only at the crummy local grocery because it’s within the boundaries of a carefully drawn government “Grocery District.”
Parents should be given a school voucher for what their city school district spends per student – upwards of $20,000 a year in most big cities – and be allowed to spend it at any public or private school they want.
For at least half a century black and brown and white kids trapped in our inner-city public school systems have been getting a fourth-rate education.
Seventy five percent of them can’t read or do math at their grade levels – but they’re automatically passed to the next grade anyway.
And most of the kids that do “graduate” from our worst city schools are barely qualified to run a register at a McDonald’s, much less go to a college or get an entry-level job with a future.
That’s because kids aren’t being taught the basics.
Instead, they’re being taught Critical Race Theory, a racist and twisted way of looking at our history that teaches school kids to hate America and hate white people.
I’m so glad the people who founded this country are dead so they can’t see what’s going on.
I’m also glad Martin Luther King Jr. is dead, so he can’t see how our failed educators are using the BS of Critical Race Theory to judge people by the color of their skin and not their character.
Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to reagan@caglecartoons.com and follow @reaganworld on Twitter
