Oregon Gives Up on Its Students

The Oregon State Board of Education, a governor-appointed panel that makes policy for the state’s beleaguered public-school system, recently extended the pandemic-era suspension of a requirement that students demonstrate proficiency in reading and math in order to graduate. The board claims that the extension — students will not have to demonstrate proficiency until 2029 at the earliest — is necessary to foster racial and ethnic equity.

The extension ran into a buzz saw of public opinion in Oregon, where policies implemented during and after Covid in the name of equity have now defined, in a bad way, the state’s politics. The Board approved it, unanimously, anyway. Oregon has had only Democratic governors for decades. They have appointed increasingly radical, and increasingly teachers’-union-affiliated, members to the board, mirroring a hard-left shift throughout state-government institutions in recent years.