Alarming signs kids are paying a steep price for low standards and less testing in schools

America’s kids are paying a steep price for lower standards and less testing in schools — and there’s no obvious sign of a turnaround.

It’s particularly troubling for New York kids, especially as state “leaders” have decided to stop requiring passing scores on Regents exams to graduate high school starting in the 2027-’28 school year.

How crucial are hard standards? Well, after colleges (in the benighted name of “equity”) stopped requiring SAT or ACT scores as part of the admissions process a few years back, a host of high schools evidently stopped teaching the skills needed to do well on such tests — even though such skills are vital to getting through college, and life.

Kids who are unprepared don’t face consequences until it’s too late — i.e., when they’re already in college and struggling to do the work expected of them.

A new report out of the University of California San Diego flagged just how dire the issue is: Though US News ranks UCSD No. 6 in the nation among public universities, fully 900 of its incoming freshmen this year (an eighth of the class, and 30 times as many as in 2020) lacked high-school-level math skills.

About 630 (one in 12) couldn’t even do middle-school-level math.

All these kids needed remedial math classes; then again, even Harvard University — Harvard! — has found it has to offer remedial math to freshmen.

How’d this happen? Consider: Almost all the UC freshmen took advanced math courses in high school; a quarter got straight A’s.

Obviously, their high schools figured just taking the class and getting a good grade would be good enough; no need for students to actually learn the material.

They knew that a lack of preparation wouldn’t keep students from getting into college — since, without SAT or ACT results, admissions staffs would just rely on (inflated) grades.

Nor is the problem limited to math: As the UC San Diego report notes, writing and language skills of first-year students have also plunged.

Pandemic-era school closures, along with a rising focus on “equity” and “engaging” students, rather than on fundamentals, have also proved disastrous.

High-school graduation rates have risen across the country — from 74% in 2007 to 87% in 2020 — even as average SAT scores dropped nearly 100 points; more kids, that is, were “earning” diplomas while learning less.

Teachers unions have been especially guilty of pushing dumbed-down standards and opposing tests: That way, their members can’t be held accountable for failing to teach well.

The problem’s particularly acute in New York, where the unions get Democrats to do their bidding.

State Education Department boss Betty Rosa — tapped by Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and his colleagues — is tight with labor, and virulently opposes testing.

Sure enough, standards in the state have been dropping for years, particularly post-COVID — and still 40% of grammar-school kids couldn’t pass math and reading tests this year.

(The anti-test crowd hasn’t been gotten rid of those yet, though did manage to make the tests optional; if they were required, even a smaller share of kids would surely pass, since struggling kids are more apt to opt out.)

And make no mistake: Students who don’t go to college may be suffering even more.

“You can’t fool the workplace,” warns Robert Pondiscio, an American Enterprise Institute education expert. “If you graduated high school and didn’t really earn it, that catches up to you in the workplace.”

So how to turn it around?

Where possible, by restoring standards; otherwise, by moving kids out of reach of the folks who produced this mess.

Many universities have re-adopted SAT or ACT requirements; that should stop some of the bleeding: Those colleges won’t readily be fooled again, so it’ll be harder for high schools to fake it.

This should reverse some decay: Families focused on their children’s future will find ways to ensure the kids actually learn, whether by making local schools work or by finding alternatives, even if it means moving to states that still have standards.

For those who remain in states like New York and California, where public education is controlled by ideologues determined to devastate standards and eviscerate all meaningful testing, school choice will be the only hope: Better-off families will flee the public schools; low-income ones will rush to whatever public charter schools they can find, or perhaps scrape up enough money for a Catholic or other low-cost alternative education.

And, if possible, take advantage of the new federal school-choice scholarships enabled by this year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Gov. Kathy Hochul still has a chance to allow New York kids to benefit from this program.

Bigger picture: Some critical mass of Americans will need to realize that many if not most of the custodians of US education have lost their way, and take back the schools and universities from the people who are setting up our children for failure.