New York again “ranks #1 in the nation” on public-school spending: $26,571 per kid, “85 percent above the national average of $14,347” — even as “student achievement is the lowest in history,” thunders the Empire Center’s Emily D’Vertola. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the “state ranks 46th in the nation for 4th grade math and has demonstrated ‘no meaningful improvement’ in 4th or 8th grade reading or math for over a decade.” “This year, less than half of students scored proficient on our state’s own grade 3-8 assessments, with some districts scoring at 0% proficiency for entire grade levels.” State leaders’ “solution? Lower standards and undermine measurement” by using “test scores from school year 2021-22” — “the lowest in the state’s history” — as the new proficiency standard.

Yoel Inbar “was slated to join the University of California at Los Angeles as a tenured professor,” but “the offer failed to materialize after 66 students signed a petition urging the administration not to hire him,” notes Reason’s Robby Soave. Their gripe: “Inbar mildly criticized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements as used by university administrations to screen potential hires,” calling them “compelled speech and empty ‘value signaling.’ ” The complaining students, Soave argues, plainly felt “that opposition to DEI statements should in fact be grounds for nonemployment.” This “essentially confirms the very criticism Inbar was making of DEI statements,” and proves that DEI pledges “tend to harm the pursuit of actual diversity” of thought by enforcing “a toxically narrow-minded worldview.”

Women’s-clothing brand Son de Flor’s choice of a gender-fluid influencer to market its garb on TikTok and Instagram “was a totally self-inflicted wound,” fumes Bethany Mandel at The Spectator. Its target customers are “women interested in timeless fashion and modesty. Overwhelmingly, that is going to translate to religious (read: conservative) women.” “An individual is only an influencer for a brand if they actually influence potential customers in a positive way,” and a gender-fluid “bearded influencer” won’t appeal to its market. “There won’t be a rush of new gender-fluid customers beating down the digital doors of Son de Flor, eager to don a long-sleeved, button-up linen dress with pockets,” and current fans put off by this choice can buy their “Little House on the Prairie look elsewhere.”

The left’s reaction to Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence in the Supreme Court’s ban on racial preferences in college admissions “is more evidence that affirmative action stigmatizes black achievement,” observes The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley. Lefties call Thomas a hypocrite for opposing racial preferences “because he supposedly benefited from them as a college student, yet no one has produced any evidence that race played a role in his admission to Holy Cross College or Yale Law School.” Some press accounts suggest he was recruited to Holy Cross, yet Thomas calls that a “lie.” Why are his Yale credentials questioned “but not Bill Clinton’s or Hillary Rodham’s,” two fellow Yale Law grads? Because of “affirmative action, which has made people suspicious of black academic and professional success.”

“Pro-black affirmative action had been making less and less sense over the past two or three decades,” cheers Spiked’s Wilfred Reilly after the recent Supreme Court ruling. In reality, Ivy League preferences have “been benefitting already wealthy and highly educated black immigrants,” not disadvantaged black kids. Such immigrants’ “children, combined with those of biracial couples, make up nearly two-thirds of all black students enrolled at universities like Harvard.” So: “Affirmative action in practice often involved the well-fed son of a Jamaican American or Colombian American dentist being given a 300-point test-score advantage over the daughter of a Vietnamese immigrant shopkeeper.” Now it’s time to target other admissions “on grounds other than academic merit”: preferences for kids of alums, faculty and big donors.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board