A recently signed law in #Oregon removes any minimum qualifications for reading, math and writing in order to earn a high school diploma.
That’s the news lead, and the fallout is just beginning. I’m qualified to join the fray because I taught GED (high school equivalency) and Adult Basic Education for five years in Chicago in the 1970s. Students were all ages and backgrounds, but mostly younger African Americans who had dropped out of school for various reasons. Some of the older attendees had set personal goals but most of my students needed the GED as a ticket to a better job or college admission.
I occasionally was asked if a GED was as good as a high school diploma. My answer always was that it’s better because at least you knew that the person could read and comprehend at the ninth-grade level, and had mastered basic arithmetic. Even in the 1970s in Chicago a high school diploma did not necessarily mean anything other than you’d attended classes on most days and hadn’t caused significant trouble for staff. The new Oregon law now makes such a policy official.
Charles Boyle, the Oregon governor’s deputy communications director, emailed staff in defending the new law (#SB 744), explaining that it will benefit “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color… . Leaders from those communities have advocated time and again for equitable graduation standards, along with expanded learning opportunities and supports.”[i]
The obvious objection to this new policy is that a meritocracy is being undermined in the name of equity, as if there must always be a statistically proportionate representation of all de jure and de facto protected classes throughout the tiers of education (and certainly in the professions, as well) and, further, that this goal can be achieved by pretending anyone with a high school diploma, then a college degree, actually earned same. In this critique, equity and proportionality are seen as a disguised quota system; even Affirmative Action did not openly call for quotas in the early days of the Civil Rights movement. Then, Affirmative Action was offered as a program to aggressively recruit minorities and, if and when necessary, help them make up any academic deficiencies or skill deficits they might have, but not guarantee anyone success.
I’m trying to understand why Oregon really has passed this law. When I hear someone called a “spokesman” for a high-ranking government official I know I’m being spun, marketed or gaslighted. So, in addition to the above, likely Conservative critique, here are several alternative hypotheses that would seem to fit the facts, though I can’t say which one is the true one, if any.
One is that too many students from underserved and marginalized communities are not meeting the academic criteria in numbers that match children from more “privileged” homes. So, you eliminate the disparity by eliminating the test or any other evidence that there is a disparity. This is akin to destroying evidence in a criminal trial, which will benefit either the prosecution or the defense, depending on who’s doing the destruction. Note, however, that victims of discrimination and marginalization in education have traditionally demanded more testing and other objective measures to prove their qualifications, whether for access to college, law school, or a job. It was objectivity that countered any form of discrimination. Today, objective measures are the last thing victim groups want to see, if we are to believe someone such as Oregon’s Charles Boyle.
Another hypothesis is simply related to the old saw, “Follow the money.” Schools generally are reimbursed based on attendance. Teacher salaries and especially those of administrators must be funded somehow. Diminishing attendance will hurt them in the pocketbook. So, eliminate a major hindrance to graduation (by eliminating the dropout problem for academic reasons; there still will be other reasons for attrition) and you hold on to more students, who are your cash cows. Local school districts are openly hostile to charter schools for this very reason – by losing students to the competition they are losing money.
Another hypothesis, a more innocent construction this time, is related to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, a theory I subscribe to. These intelligences could be the traditional ones – in math, in science, in language – but may also include musical talent, for example. I don’t know if Beethoven could do Calculus, but he sure could write music. Ditto for Shawn Corey Carter, better known as JAY-Z, I suppose. Even social skills count – some people have great skills and might make great counselors or therapists one day. Should flunking an English literature course count against them? In general, we should not want to hold back people who excel in one area just because they don’t excel in another. Unfortunately, it’s not clear to me yet that Gardner’s theory has much to do with the new Oregon law. There’s a five-year period in which new guidelines for graduation will be developed so we’ll see.
Lastly, one can argue that being a high school graduate, or a Ph.D., does not in any way guarantee that you’re a better person, and that it’s the content of one’s character, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, that should matter. What do we hate about Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin – that they were bad at math and physics, or that they were truly evil people? Yet judgments about character are notoriously hard to make – was Andrew Cuomo a great governor but a terrible person, or not quite either? There’s a lot to be said for students who have come from difficult circumstances yet fought hard to make up lost ground even if they are not the top of the class in this or that discipline; it’s another thing to excuse poor performance altogether. Yet that’s just what the new Oregon law does.
[i] https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/08/gov-kate-brown-signed-a-law-to-allow-oregon-students-to-graduate-without-proving-they-can-write-or-do-math-she-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-it.html
I love this piece. It was very thoughtfully written. I would be interested to hear your views of what’s happening in our public library in Indianapolis.