Posted on 12/22/2020 6:24:22 PM PST by blam
District officials in San Diego evidently believe that the practice of grading students based on average scores is racist.
K-12 students in large public school districts across the country spent much of the fall semester at home, a less-than-ideal result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Zoom learning was hardly the only significant change to the education system. Some school districts are embracing trendy but dubious ideas about how to fight racism in the classroom.
The San Diego Unified School District, for instance, moved this fall to abolish its traditional grading system. Students will still receive letter grades, but they won't reflect average scores on papers, quizzes, and tests. Under the new system, pupils will not be penalized for failing to complete assignments or even show up for class, and teachers will give them extra opportunities to demonstrate their "mastery" of subjects. What constitutes mastery is not quite clear, but grades "shall not be influenced by behavior or factors that directly measure students' knowledge and skills in the content area," according to guidance from the district.
District officials evidently believe that the practice of grading students based on average scores is racist and that "anti-racism" demands a learning environment free of the pressure to turn in assignments on time. As evidence for the urgency of these changes, the district released data showing that minority students received more Ds and Fs than white students: Just 7 percent of whites received failing grades, compared to 23 percent of Native Americans, 23 percent of Hispanics, and 20 percent of black students.
"This is part of our honest reckoning as a school district," Vice President Richard Barrera told a local NBC affiliate. "If we're actually going to be an anti-racist school district, we have to confront practices like this that have gone on for years and years."
These changes to San Diego schools' grading system are an excellent example of a bureaucracy citing a noble-sounding goal (who could be against anti-racism?) to justify a policy that doesn't address the issue whatsoever. After all, eliminating these kinds of grades won't eliminate the underlying inequities that produced the disparate failure rates. It may actually cover those inequities up: Given that grades are a tool for evaluating students' progress, the district is essentially announcing that it will no longer gather as much evidence as it could about negative social phenomena it would presumably like to fix. Better grades do not mean students will suddenly have a better grasp of the material. They certainly won't be better prepared for college, where traditional grades are very much still a thing.
(snip)
Get your kids out of the public schools, NOW!
Bkmk
Yup
Been saying it forever
Hopefully people listen now
Now just guess why it is considered racist.
Grading has to be racist. That is why Asian children do so well. < sarc
How anti-racism lessons INCREASE pupil intolerance by ‘causing animosity to other cultures’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315483/How-anti-racism-lesson-INCREASE-pupil-intolerance-They-cause-animosity-cultures.html
Public unions must be outlawed!!!
Next the traitorous leftists will advocate eliminating education in schools. Even if there’s no grading, some children could still learn more than others, thus producing inequality.
My wife was a teacher. She had 6 classes and at least 35 students per class as a minimum. This was in California so apples to apples comparison. This is a a fantasy that a teacher can adjust classes for individual students. It can’t be done because there just isn’t enough time in a day to check each student’s needs. In her English class she had Hispanics, Chinese, Indian, and Black kids. Each group has their own problem with English if not spoken at home. Then Rap and Pop music, texting that kids mimic leads to an impossible situation and these idiots will make it much worse.
The first thing career anti-racists do is encourage everyone to judge on the basis of skin color, it’s a matter of job security that they do so. This in addition to trying to make sure people feel as oppressed, repressed and miserable as possible.
Happy and unprejudiced people simply don’t need grace grievance hustlers fighting against racism for them. Happy bigots may also be unlikely to pay them well as they can judge their neighbor based on race just fine without help.
I want to meet the person that doesn’t think this is nuts.
You could be my senator
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... home school boom coming
San Diego used to be very conservative but over the years it changed. Even elected a “Red Diaper Baby” mayor, Robert? Filner whose parents were Communist Party USA organizers in Pennsylvania.
PS: San Diego education planners - MATH is not racist. French is not racist. Phys Ed is not racist. English is nto racist. Civics is not racist.
YOU ARE!!
Sounds like they want to eliminate public schools.
And give them all Marijuana?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.