As I have pointed out many times, just because a state is “red” doesn’t mean that its education systems aren’t riddled with leftist zealots. In today’s Martin Center article, Gregory A. Brown shines light on an unhelpful program in Nebraska that selectively lowers expectations for minority students.

He writes:

Billed as a “campus-wide approach to student success” in which “every staff and faculty member actively connects students to resources and networks,” the new framework redirects institutional focus from academic excellence to emotional support and to inconsistent expectations based on students’ socioeconomic status or identity group. Instead of reinforcing core principles such as content mastery, discipline, and merit-based achievement, the model promotes a subjective, shifting standard that erodes the value of a college degree.

Naturally, the program has a nice name — the Ecological Validation Model. That hides what’s going on: lowered standards for certain groups. Supposedly, that helps them succeed.

Brown continues, “What emerges is a telling pattern: First-generation and low-income students are being used as a Trojan horse. Their struggles are cited to sell the policy, but the changes that follow serve an ideological DEI agenda, not the students themselves — diluting standards for everyone while denying these students the rigor they deserve.”

Nebraska officials should read this and take action to stop it.