WTF? High School Adopts Race-Based Grading System In 2022/23 School Year For ‘Equity’ Reasons
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This is the result of educators adopting Critical Race Theory as a lens through which they view education.
For a primer on what Critical Race Theory is and how it’s creeping into education, see Christopher Rufo’s excellent CRT Briefing Book which includes a guidebook for parents who want to push back against this neo-racism being force-fed to students.
In an effort to combat ridiculous failure rates among black and Hispanic students — 77% and 49% respectively, compared to 27% for Asians and 25% for whites — Oak Park and River Forest High School located in a suburb of Chicago is restructuring its grading system to promote “equity” through race-based grading.
But this isn’t racist, guys, honest.
It’s just going to look at skin color and ethnicity and excuse certain behaviors from particular groups in order to have them advance.
Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators will require teachers next school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students.
School board members discussed the plan called “Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading” at a meeting on May 26, presented by Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Laurie Fiorenza.
In an effort to equalize test scores among racial groups, OPRF will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students. They can no longer be docked for missing class, misbehaving in school or failing to turn in their assignments, according to the plan.
Emphasis added
Students who skipped class, didn’t hand in their work, and perhaps mouthed off to teachers or caused classroom disruptions will graduate… and then what? What is that teaching these students? Will they expect that in college or trade school? What about their future jobs?
Excusing bad behavior based on race is essentially saying that certain groups are exempt from the universal standards of conduct because they are incapable of meeting the requirement. It’s bloody racist!
The new grading system will be implemented with elective courses in the coming 2022/23 school year and then will be used for academic courses the following year.
One of the slides in the presentation outlining the changes and the rationale behind the move states, “[t]raditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap.”
They’re going to falsely inflate students’ grades… how does that help those students navigate that “opportunity gap” when they get shuttled off to college and can’t handle it because they have been failed by the education system that held them to lower standards? Maybe it’s better for students to learn proper work ethic in a school that doesn’t require a student loan.
But what does it shift mean for the students that work hard to earn their “A”? Well, for one, it completely cheapens their achievements.
But the goal isn’t just to bring some students up, it’s also to pull other students down.
Advocates for so-called “equity based” grading practices, which seek to raise the grade point averages of black students and lower scores of higher-achieving Asian, white and Hispanic ones, say new grading criteria are necessary to further school districts’ mission of DEIJ, or “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice.”
Isn’t there some sort of anti-discrimination law that this violates? They’re literally using race to both inflate and reduce grades.
It should be interesting to see if this is challenged like Harvard’s race-based admissions policy that is discriminating against Asian and white students.
Two cases about discriminatory “Affirmative Action” admissions will be heard by the Supreme Court in October of this year.
But the DEI advocates are pushing for more discrimination in the name of “equity.”
“By training teachers to remove the non-academic factors from their grading practices and recognize when personal biases manifest, districts can proactively signal a clear commitment toward DEIJ,” said Margaret Sullivan, associate director at the Education Advisory Board, which sells consulting services to colleges and universities.
Sullivan calls grading based on traditional classroom testing and homework performance “outdated practices” and foster “unconscious biases.”
“Teachers may unintentionally let non-academic factors—like student behavior or whether a student showed up to virtual class—interfere with their final evaluation of students.,” she said. “Traditional student grades include non-academic criteria that do not reflect student learning gains—including participation and on-time homework submission.”
Source: West Cook News(Emphasis added)
The “educators” are calling it “equitable assessment and grading practices.”
How Orwellian.
This is all part of the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” model that is being pushed into more and more schools as a result of the Critical Race Theory lens that is being taught to teachers and filtering down to both interactions with the students and classroom instruction.
The last slide in the PowerPoint presentation reads, “Oak Park and River Forest High School will establish a Philosophy of Grading that reflects a rigorous, meaningful, and evidence-based process by which student learning is understood.”
How are they going to do that, exactly? Well, a previous slide explains that teachers will be “utilizing aspects of competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book, and encouraging and rewarding growth over time.”
The students can’t possibly be truly helped by this in the long term. Fewer than half (45.9%) of black college students complete their degree in six years as it is. That’s a lower rate than any other racial group. How will this set them up for success post-secondary?
If schools were serious about actually helping black students they’d be focused on how to ensure that these students were prepared for the next chapter of their lives rather than just creating a “Get Out Of High School Free” card that helps them dodge scrutiny on how the public education system has consistently failed black students.
During that pandemic, teachers’ unions colluded with the Biden administration and fought to keep schools closed. This caused massive amounts of learning loss among students, but who did that hurt the most? Black and Hispanic students as well as students with disabilities.
The answer, of course, is a little competition because the public school system has a near-monopoly on education.
Parents want choice in education and that includes black parents.
83% of children attend district-run public schools
But a new nationwide survey finds that only 34% of respondents would actually choose those schools when given a real exit option
This is exactly why the unions fight so hard against giving families a choice.
— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) December 21, 2020
Despite black Americans making up just 13% of the population, black students are 26% of charter school enrollment. That’s diversity.
But we have seen that there are some Democrats who sent their kids to private schools yet are hostile to school choice.
*cough* Elizabeth Warren *cough*
School choice is the civil rights issue of our time.
Don’t expect a lot of Democrats to embrace it, though. They count on those teachers’ unions for support. And they’ve got to keep students in public schools or the funding is cut. It doesn’t matter if it’s actually better for students.
- Public School Enrollment Is Down And So Are The Budgets — Here’s The 411
- DEAR JOE BIDEN: Study Finds That School Choice Reduces Teen Suicide — Do You Still Oppose It?
Meanwhile, the educational standards in the United States continue to slip.
Kids can’t do math or read, but they know all about pronouns, thanks to their radical gender ideology, and are taught that the 1619 Project is actual history when it has been criticized as inaccurate by historians. Oh, and then there’s the insane age-inappropriate sex-ed curriculum that has been the target of conservatives’ ire for the past 20 years or so.
We need to do better for all of our students and school choice is a far better option than lowering standards based on race.
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