Bend-La Pine Schools disgraced themselves recently, though they did so with the encouragement of the Oregon Legislature. It’s time the latter fixed the mess it made in 2015 and rescind the law that allows students to avoid Smarter Balanced and similar exams if they wish.

Participation in the exams, which serve a variety of useful functions, has dropped off dramatically. While the 2018 statewide numbers are bad, Bend-La Pine’s numbers are far worse. Here, only 21.5 percent of 11th graders took the Smarter Balanced English assessment and 20.6 percent took the math assessment. Statewide, some 85.9 percent and 83.1 percent, respectively, took the tests.

That should make parents furious, and for the very reasons Smarter Balanced is a far better measuring stick than the ACT tests which many would use to replace them. They provide a better way to compare education systems across states, for one thing. More important, both ACT and SAT are designed to measure college readiness. Neither is designed for English-language learners, special education students or others for whom college is unlikely. In Oregon, that’s about 40 percent of all students.

Gov. Kate Brown signed the 2015 bill that makes it easy to opt out of the exams. She did pay lip service to the notion that students should take the tests, but that’s about all. Now, if she’s as interested in secondary education as she says she is, Brown should push to close the opt-out loophole.