Aleysha Ortiz graduated Hartford Public Schools with honors — she can't read a single sentence. UC San Diego had to create remedial classes for remedial classes after test-blind admissions flooded them with students who can't do middle school math. Mississippi proved real standards transform outcomes; California's 72% Black 4th-grade illiteracy rate proves what happens when you abandon them.
Aleysha Ortiz graduated Hartford Public Schools with honors. She cannot read or write a single sentence. Teachers told her to “stay in a corner and sleep.” Now she’s suing for negligence. San Francisco pays six figures for “Grading for Equity” consultants who say homework shouldn’t count and 80% earns an A. The game is hiding failure — and tests reveal the rot.
February 18, 2026 · 4 min read
Film students at top universities can’t sit through movies. At Indiana University, fewer than 50% even started assigned films; only 20% finished. At UW-Madison, more than half couldn’t identify what happened at the end of Jules and Jim. Meanwhile, Mississippi — the only state to improve reading for its bottom 10% — proved that real standards with real support actually work.
Jan 31, 2026 · 5 min
Democrats cut gifted programs for equity theater. Republicans score dunks without offering alternatives. The Center for Educational Progress names the bipartisan failure: progressives can’t applaud excellence unless it closes demographic gaps; conservatives just have to outrun Democrats. Neither party asks if students are actually learning anything.
Jan 30, 2026 · 5 min
Archival footage from May 2020 proves UC Regents knew dropping the SAT contradicted faculty data — and voted unanimously for it anyway. Regent Lansing: “All of the data that I have listened to from the faculty says that the test is not an impediment.” Regent Makarechian warned they’d admit students who “jam up the whole classroom.” Every Regent collapsed under Janet Napolitano’s pressure.
Jan 24, 2026 · 5 min
UCSD created remedial classes for remedial classes after discovering 1 in 12 freshmen couldn’t do middle school math. The kicker: 25% of students in the remedial-remedial course had perfect 4.0 GPAs in high school. The UC system’s own Math Department knew SAT scores were the best predictor of math placement — but test-blind policy meant they couldn’t use them.
Jan 05, 2026 · 2 min
