The fact that more than half of California students did not meet state English standards and two out of three did not meet state math standards is potentially a threat to national security, according to a parental rights advocate.
“Students eventually will graduate and enter the workforce but if they cannot do math or read or write at a proficient level, how can they perform any job function,” said Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CFER). “We will have to outsource our jobs, import talent from other states and foreign workers from overseas from potentially politically unfriendly nations who may not share the same values.”
Wu was reacting to the release of California’s Smarter Balanced Assessment, which is the first set of K-12 student test scores to be posted publicly since COVID shut down the schools.
“It's devastating,” Wu said. “A lot of it has to do with the direction in which the public education system has been going in California, which is away from basic academic instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic towards ideological conformity and indoctrination.”
The test results show that 84% of black students and 79% percent of Hispanic and low-income students did not meet state math standards. Some 83.5% of economically disadvantaged eleventh-graders did not meet state math standards and 55% percent did not meet English standards.
“It’s not a left or right issue,” Wu told the Southern California Record. “It’s about the survival of our public education system. School districts and school boards need to re-evaluate their policies and remove ideological fluff like diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is now being married to transgenderism. Parents don't want their kids, especially parents of young kids, to be indoctrinated with transgenderism or LGBTQiplus.”
Another set of achievement scores published by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) called “The National Report Card” found that a mere 30% of eighth-graders achieved proficiency in reading and 23% in math. It's an ominous sign, according to Wu.
"Employers in a free market system are looking for talent and competitiveness," she said. "They're looking for certain specialized skill sets that, if not met by the local supply of workers, will be met elsewhere. It's basic supply and demand, but our policies and our system are not helping. They are actually making matters worse."
Wu is hopeful, however, that the mid-term elections on Nov. 8 will bring some improvements.
"I think there will be some changes in the school board races that are contested,” she added. “There could be a parent revolt or parent rebellion against the so-called education establishment, which is not working out for our kids or the state. We need more political competition at both the state and local levels to incentivize reforms and policy changes that are conducive to public education."