{"id":63103,"date":"2025-12-07T05:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T05:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/63103\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T05:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T05:01:10","slug":"alarming-signs-kids-are-paying-a-steep-price-for-low-standards-and-less-testing-in-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/63103\/","title":{"rendered":"Alarming signs kids are paying a steep price for low standards and less testing in schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

America\u2019s kids are paying a steep price for lower standards and less testing<\/a> in schools \u2014 and there\u2019s no obvious sign of a turnaround.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s particularly troubling for New York kids, especially as state \u201cleaders\u201d have decided to stop requiring passing scores on Regents exams to graduate high school starting in the 2027-\u201928 school year.<\/p>\n

How crucial are hard standards? Well, after colleges (in the benighted name of \u201cequity\u201d) stopped requiring SAT or ACT scores as part of the admissions process a few years back, a host of high schools evidently stopped teaching the skills needed to do well on such tests \u2014 even though such skills are vital to getting through college, and life.<\/p>\n

Kids who are unprepared don\u2019t face consequences until it\u2019s too late \u2014 i.e., when they\u2019re already in college and struggling to do the work expected of them.<\/p>\n

A new report out of the University of California San Diego flagged just how dire<\/a> the issue is: Though US News ranks UCSD No. 6 in the nation among public universities, fully 900 of its incoming freshmen this year (an eighth of the class, and 30 times as many as in 2020) lacked high-school-level math skills.<\/p>\n

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About 630 (one in 12) couldn\u2019t even do middle-school-level math.<\/p>\n

All these kids needed remedial math classes; then again, even Harvard University \u2014 Harvard! \u2014 has found it has to offer<\/a> remedial math to freshmen.<\/p>\n

How\u2019d this happen? Consider: Almost all the UC freshmen took advanced math courses in high school; a quarter got straight A\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Obviously, their high schools figured just taking the class and getting a good grade would be good enough; no need for students to actually learn the material.<\/p>\n

They knew that a lack of preparation wouldn\u2019t keep students from getting into college \u2014 since, without SAT or ACT results, admissions staffs would just rely on (inflated) grades.<\/p>\n

Nor is the problem limited to math: As the UC San Diego report notes, writing and language skills of first-year students have also plunged.<\/p>\n

Pandemic-era school closures<\/a>, along with a rising focus on \u201cequity\u201d and \u201cengaging\u201d students, rather than on fundamentals, have also proved disastrous.<\/p>\n

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High-school graduation rates have risen across the country \u2014 from 74% in 2007 to 87% in 2020 \u2014 even as average SAT scores dropped nearly 100 points; more kids, that is, were \u201cearning\u201d diplomas while learning less.<\/p>\n

Teachers unions have been especially guilty of pushing dumbed-down standards and opposing tests: That way, their members can\u2019t be held accountable for failing to teach well.<\/p>\n

The problem\u2019s particularly acute in New York, where the unions get Democrats to do their bidding.<\/p>\n

State Education Department boss Betty Rosa \u2014 tapped by Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and his colleagues \u2014 is tight with labor, and virulently opposes testing.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, standards in the state have been dropping for years, particularly post-COVID \u2014 and still 40% of grammar-school kids couldn\u2019t pass<\/a> math and reading tests this year.<\/p>\n

(The anti-test crowd hasn\u2019t been gotten rid of those yet, though did manage to make the tests optional; if they were required, even a smaller share of kids would surely pass, since struggling kids are more apt to opt out.)<\/p>\n

And make no mistake: Students who don\u2019t go to college may be suffering even more.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t fool the workplace,\u201d warns Robert Pondiscio, an American Enterprise Institute education expert. \u201cIf you graduated high school and didn\u2019t really earn it, that catches up to you in the workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how to turn it around?<\/p>\n

Where possible, by restoring standards; otherwise, by moving kids out of reach of the folks who produced this mess.<\/p>\n

Many universities have re-adopted SAT or ACT requirements; that should stop some of the bleeding: Those colleges won\u2019t readily be fooled again, so it\u2019ll be harder for high schools to fake it.<\/p>\n

This should reverse some decay: Families focused on their children\u2019s future will find ways to ensure the kids actually learn, whether by making local schools work or by finding alternatives, even if it means moving to states that still have standards.<\/p>\n

For those who remain in states like New York and California, where public education is controlled by ideologues determined to devastate standards and eviscerate all meaningful testing<\/a>, school choice will be the only hope: Better-off families will flee the public schools<\/a>; low-income ones will rush to whatever public charter schools they can find, or perhaps scrape up enough money for a Catholic or other low-cost alternative education.<\/p>\n

And, if possible, take advantage of the new federal school-choice scholarships enabled by this year\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Gov. Kathy Hochul still has a chance<\/a> to allow New York kids to benefit from this program.<\/p>\n

Bigger picture: Some critical mass of Americans will need to realize that many if not most of the custodians of US education have lost their way, and take back the schools and universities from the people who are setting up our children for failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"America\u2019s kids are paying a steep price for lower standards and less testing in schools \u2014 and there\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10691,1692,8676,304,67,6925,9,11,10,299,209,5271,6916,6926,5181,13038,9729],"class_list":["post-63103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-carl-heastie","tag-colleges-and-universities","tag-coronavirus","tag-editorial","tag-education","tag-math","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-opinion","tag-public-schools","tag-schools","tag-standardized-testing","tag-state-education-department","tag-teachers","tag-teachers-union","tag-university-of-california"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}