At the same time Oregon’s largest school district is on the verge of a strike , the Oregon State Board of Education took action this month making it unequivocally clear how little it values education, teachers, or students.

On Oct. 19 , the 11-member board voted unanimously to suspend until at least 2028 the state’s long-held essential skills requirements for receiving a high school diploma. The assessment required students to be able to “read and comprehend a variety of text, write clearly and accurately,” “apply mathematics in a variety of settings,” and demonstrate these skills by “earning at or above a cut score on the Oregon Statewide Summative Assessment test.”

The suspension of these standards is actually a continuation of a pause that began in 2021 following the passage of Oregon Senate Bill 744 . Proponents of the bill argued that learning loss caused by COVID-19 school closures required a pause on Oregon’s essential skills proficiency requirement while state education leaders reviewed “requirements for a high school diploma options.”

After what was undoubtedly a thorough and labor-intensive academic review, the board found that requiring students to complete standardized tests successfully presented a “ harmful hurdle for historically marginalized students .”

With no sense of irony, the board’s reasoning for the decision to protect minority students simultaneously showcases its “ soft bigotry of low expectations .”

Oregon parents should be up in arms that the Board of Education seems to think the level of academic excellence achievable for their children is predetermined by the color of their skin. Likewise, teachers should be offended that their administrative leaders see them as incapable of teaching and preparing their students.

Meanwhile, what has not received as much attention as the action itself is those who gleefully take credit for the outcome: the state’s teachers union.

The Oregon Education Association , which represents roughly 41,000 teachers across the state, shares the same misguided belief that standardized tests, such as Oregon’s statewide summative assessments, are “ instruments of racism and a biased system .” Its leaders happily pat themselves on the back for eliminating basic academic requirements.

The OEA Special Education Committee , for example, brags about having “helped to develop … and helped OEA pass … Senate Bill 744 during the last legislative session.”

Yet the OEA’s mission statement claims that in addition to being the exclusive representative for teachers, it will “ensure quality education for students in Oregon.” If only that were true.

The OEA, alongside the Oregon State Board of Education, has reduced a high school diploma to little more than a participation trophy for Oregon’s students. Perhaps that’s why graduation rates in the Beaver State reached a near-record high after the essential skills requirements were suspended. Oregon’s class of 2022, for instance, set a record for the second-highest four-year graduation rate ever recorded in the state — with a graduation rate of 81.3 %.

At first glance, a “near-record graduation rate” sounds like a great thing. It’s too bad the number is indicative of absolutely nothing . In the same year, only 43% of those students were proficient in English, and just 30.6% tested proficient in math.

The advocacy of policies that do not require students to learn and demonstrate basic math and language skills has not only reduced the quality of the public education system but put the same students the board believes it is helping at a significant disadvantage as they move on from high school. Parents should be enraged. Taxpayers should demand change.

And what should be clear to everyone is that the teachers unions are not only entirely unhelpful in what they should be doing, but their policies actively harm our students. Albert Shanker, the former president of the American Federation of Teachers, perhaps summarized it best when he said, “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.”

Jason Dudash is the northwest director of the Freedom Foundation.