CUNY’s Backslide

This is worrisome: CUNY seems to have adopted Team de Blasio’s fondness for dropping standards in schools. As The Post reported this week, City University officials scrapped the requirement for freshmen to have passed Algebra 2 (trigonometry) in high school or take remedial classes. Most students, they say, don’t need it for later courses.

As a result, only 62 percent required remedial classes in 2017 vs. 80 percent in 2016. The percentage needing remedial math in particular fell from 73 percent to 52 percent.

Naturally, the city touted the drops as proof that high-school graduates are entering CUNY better prepared. What baloney: All that’s happening is that, with lower standards, more kids are passing.

CUNY denies lowering the bar, claiming its “graduation requirements and standards in credit-bearing courses and all majors re- main exactly the same.” Yet that’s clearly not true if kids no longer need Algebra 2.

Nor is learning it a waste. After all, CUNY officials required trig for decades for a reason. Yes, some kids won’t ever use it. But an extra math course can help kids develop the ability to learn and engage in logical and abstract thinking, which is useful in business, social science and life generally.

CUNY’s motivation, of course, is understandable: Kids shouldn’t be coming to college when they’re not truly ready even to graduate high school. That they are is largely the city’s fault.

But scrapping a requirement only weakens the value of a CUNY diploma — and cheats kids.

Twenty years ago, CUNY went through dramatic changes, with standards raised. That helped the kids, as well as the school’s image. What a shame to slide back now.