Fourteen years ago, lawmakers set an ambitious goal for higher education: By 2025, 80% of Oregon’s young people would hold a college degree or an education credential of some sort.
Unsurprisingly, the state fell short.
How do we know that 80% of “Oregon’s young people” are capable of meeting these thresholds? It is unrealistic to assume that a certain percentage of the population can achieve something when it’s not been done before. What we should want instead is for each individual to achieve success for themselves as they define it, not how the government does.
Last week, the director of Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission asked lawmakers whether it’s time to revisit the state’s 40-40-20 goal and to reconsider what benchmarks would best suit the educational needs of Oregonians and the economic needs of the state.
They explain later in the article that the 40-40-20 goal is 40% four-year college degree, 40% an AA degree or industry or job certification, and 20% high school diploma. Oregon meets none of those goals, but again, it’s a dumb benchmark. But not everyone thinks so:
“Perhaps one of the most important things … it did was express the perspective that all young people are capable,” Ben Cannon, executive director of the higher education commission, told lawmakers.
‘This is hilariously, demonstrably untrue. Some kids, like some adults, are dumb as turnips and absolutely incapable of achieving any of these state goals of the 40-40-20 scheme. And I say this with a high school diploma today being about as meaningless a piece of paper as junk mail is in the post. It denotes no academic qualifications whatsoever and cannot even serve as a certificate of attendance.
So far as the 40-40-20 plan goes: Oregon’s results today are 39-18-11, but again, aggregating this means nothing.
After hitting pandemic-era lows, high school graduation rates have been climbing modestly in the last few years. Nearly 82% of the class of 2024 graduated within four years, the second highest rate in state history, but there is a caveat. The state board of education has suspended until 2029 the requirement that students must prove they have a “basic mastery” of reading, writing and math skills via passing a series of standardized tests or completing a standalone series of assignments designed by their teachers.
And what we do know from Oregon testing is that more than 50% of students lack grade level proficiency in reading, math, and science. But we graduate them all the same.