Toxic Empathy in Education: How Misplaced “Compassion” Is Lowering Standards and Failing Our Students
- Rex Ballard
- Jun 9
- 4 min read
In her book Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion, Allie Beth Stuckey identifies a dangerous distortion: empathy becomes toxic when it encourages us to affirm falsehoods, ignore consequences, or support policies that ultimately harm the very people they claim to help. This concept finds a clear and troubling application in American education today.
Across the country—and acutely here in California—policymakers and institutions have relaxed or eliminated objective measures of proficiency under the banner of compassion, equity, and reducing student stress. The results are measurable declines in achievement, graduates unprepared for college or work, and a quiet erosion of the merit-based pathways that once offered genuine opportunity. What presents itself as kindness often functions as a form of warped compassion that protects institutions and adults from hard truths while shortchanging children.
Declining Performance Meets Lowered Expectations
The Nation’s Report Card (NAEP) documents the damage. Reading scores for fourth- and eighth-graders continued to fall in 2024, extending a pre-pandemic decline. Math recovery remains incomplete, with eighth-grade performance still roughly a grade level behind pre-2019 levels. High school seniors have posted some of the lowest reading scores since the 1990s, and math scores are at multi-decade lows.
California’s own assessments show roughly 49% of students meeting or exceeding English Language Arts standards statewide, with math proficiency lower and regional gaps persisting—particularly in the Central Valley and northern counties. Shasta County data reflects these broader challenges, with proficiency rates in county programs and many districts lagging state averages.
Rather than redoubling efforts to raise every student to higher levels of mastery, too many responses have involved removing gates: the elimination of California’s high school exit exam years ago, the transition of early-exit proficiency testing into a more limited equivalency program, and the broader de-emphasis on rigorous, standardized checkpoints.
These moves were often framed as compassionate—sparing students “unnecessary” pressure or closing supposed equity gaps. In practice, they reduce accountability and allow significant knowledge gaps to persist into adulthood.
College Admissions and the Test-Optional Experiment
The same pattern appears in higher education. During and after the pandemic, many colleges adopted test-optional policies for the SAT and ACT. While some selective institutions have since reinstated requirements after reviewing internal data—finding that submitted scores strongly predict success—many others have kept the policy in place.
Defenders present this as expanded access and reduced barriers. Yet research reveals costs. A Dartmouth study showed that test-optional policies can harm high-achieving students from disadvantaged backgrounds: these students frequently under-submit scores (perhaps assuming the tests will not help them), missing a meaningful admissions advantage. Strong scores materially improve their odds.
At selective schools, applicants who submit scores are often admitted at higher rates and receive stronger aid packages. High school grade inflation has made transcripts less reliable signals of readiness. Standardized tests, for all their limitations, provide an objective benchmark that helps identify capable students from every zip code and school type. Removing or sidelining them shifts weight toward subjective factors that frequently favor families with resources and coaching.
The result is a form of toxic empathy: the policy sounds caring, yet it can leave capable students from ordinary backgrounds at a disadvantage while admitting others who may struggle once enrolled—higher remediation needs, lower completion rates, and wasted time and debt. The students most harmed are often those the policies purport to uplift: bright children in underperforming schools who lose objective measures of ability, and graduates who enter college or jobs believing they are ready, only to confront reality.
This is not genuine compassion. Genuine compassion equips young people with knowledge, skills, and resilience. It refuses to affirm low performance as acceptable or to validate the idea that rigorous standards are the enemy. It measures outcomes honestly and adjusts course accordingly.
The Real Costs—in Shasta County and Beyond
In our own region, these national and state trends are not abstract. Families in Shasta County navigate schools facing the same proficiency challenges seen statewide. Debates over curriculum rigor, school funding, and accountability continue. When standards slip, and objective measures fade, the consequences appear in local classrooms, in the preparedness of graduates heading to community colleges or the workforce, and in the quiet frustration of parents who sense their children are being underserved.
The broader societal price includes a less skilled workforce, diminished economic mobility, and a weakening of the shared expectation that education delivers real capability rather than credentials.
Reclaiming Standards as an Act of Care
Toxic empathy in education does not mean rejecting care for struggling students. It means rejecting the false choice between compassion and excellence. High standards, clear proficiency requirements, and meaningful assessments are tools of genuine love—they reveal where help is needed and ensure that help produces results rather than excuses.
Restoring rigor does not require cruelty. It requires honesty: phonics-based reading instruction that works, explicit math teaching that builds mastery, curriculum that prioritizes knowledge over ideology, and assessments that tell the truth. It means supporting teachers with effective methods instead of endless new initiatives. It means empowering parents and local communities—here in Shasta County and across California—to demand accountability rather than accept lowered bars as progress.
Colleges that have reinstated testing requirements after reviewing their own data are acting on evidence, not nostalgia. States and districts seeing gains are generally those that have leaned into proven instruction and measurable goals rather than further relaxation.
True compassion in education refuses to sacrifice children's long-term interests on the altar of short-term feelings or ideological goals. It insists that every student—regardless of background—deserves the dignity of high expectations and the tools to meet them. Lowering standards may feel kind in the moment. Over time, it is one of the least compassionate things we can do.
Sources and Further Reading
Allie Beth Stuckey, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion (2024).
Laura Hollis columns on warped compassion (The Epoch Times and Creators Syndicate).
The Nation’s Report Card (NAEP) 2024 and long-term trend results.
California Department of Education assessment data and proficiency program information.
Research on test-optional policies, including NBER analysis of impacts on disadvantaged high-achievers.
Shasta County and statewide Smarter Balanced summaries.
