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credit: mothenaturenetwork

One of the most common educational axioms, born out by millennia of experience, is students required to meet high standards of performance will learn, and perform, at higher levels than those who don’t.  Expect much of kids and you’ll get much.  Expect little, you’ll get less.

That was certainly my experience, though to be fair I really didn’t have a solid base for comparison.  I always had high expectations for my students, clearly understanding I would have to do extra work with those who honestly couldn’t reach the heights.  Still, those students achieved far more than they would have achieved under a teacher who expected nothing of them.  Kids who just didn’t care and didn’t try were another story, of course.

I also taught Advanced Placement classes, and would always accept kids who weren’t AP material, but really wanted to learn as much as they could and wanted the challenge.  They didn’t get an A, but they got far more for their efforts than some AP kids.

Obviously, millennia of experience doesn’t matter in Illinois:

No, it’s not just in Illinois…

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.

Let’s consider these assertions, gentle readers.  Kids in most schools aren’t “docked for missing class.”  Rather, their grades suffer because when they miss class, they don’t learn.  In virtually every discipline, the knowledge gained in one class enables kids to learn and do more demanding things in the next.  Kids who miss too many classes fall hopelessly behind, and commonly never do anything to catch up.  Few, if any, professional teachers include misbehavior in grading, but when kids misbehave too often or too badly, they miss class, and when they miss class…

And now, at Oak Park and River Forest High Schools, non-white kids no longer have to do anything, or apparently, even show up.  If kids in favored victim groups turn in no assignments, they’re still going to pass, and eventually, graduate from high school knowing little more than they did prior to their first day on campus.  In a stunning act of enlightened pedagogy, this school district has abolished expectations for learning for BIPOC kids, to use the popular vernacular.

‘Traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap,’ reads a slide in the PowerPoint deck outlining its rationale and goals.

It calls for what OPRF leaders describe as ‘competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book…encouraging and rewarding growth over time.’

Teachers are being instructed how to measure student  ‘growth’ while keeping the school leaders’ political ideology in mind.

‘Teachers and administrators at OPRFHS will continue the process necessary to make grading improvements that reflect our core beliefs,’ the plan states, promising to ‘consistently integrate equitable assessment and grading practices into all academic and elective courses’ by fall 2023.

If I understand this properly, BIPOC kids are going to graduate as long as they demonstrate “growth,” which will obviously not include literacy, developing habits necessary for supporting oneself, or learning and filing away any of the knowledge necessary to be a functional citizen.  As one might suspect, the motivation for doing this is non-white kids are failing academically, particularly when compared with white and Asian kids.

Teachers will keep two sets of books: one for white kids, and one for all others.  White kids have to learn and perform, the rest don’t.  This, to lunatic leftists, is not fairness, but “equity,” which is much, much better.  This will dramatically lower teacher work loads.

Sane, professional educators would try to figure out why non-white students were doing so poorly, and would implement whatever changes were necessary so they could achieve at an appropriately high level, however, as John Belushi used to say: “but noooooooooooooo!”

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.’

‘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.

“Equity,” gentle readers means everyone gets the same outcome regardless of how much they learn or work.  Merit and effort are indications of racism and non-wokeness, so achieving the same outcomes means lowering standards for those who won’t do any work in the first place.  In other words, the same, but different outcomes, which is what equity is all about: everyone is forced to pretend doing nothing is a marvelous accomplishment that demonstrates the brilliance of the educators allowing kids to do nothing. This allows schools to pretend all students are high achievers—how could it be otherwise with such woke administrators and teachers?—without doing any actual teaching.  It’s a nice gig if you can get it.

Fiorenza called for a switch to race-based grading last August, after issuing a report chronicling a spike in ‘F’ grades by OPRF students in the 2020-21 school year.

‘OPRF’s administration will adopt language that makes and keeps the system visible and continues to name racism as a complex interconnected structure,’ she wrote. ‘We must recognize the unique challenges faced during the pandemic intensify the need for a systemic approach to confronting the racial and socioeconomic discrepancies often experienced by our underrepresented student population.’

But of course!  Eliminate high numbers of “F” grades by eliminating “F” grades, not by increasing student learning and achievement.  It’s only a matter of time before the only grade a student can get is an “A” or its woke equivalent.

Last year, West Cook News reported on an adjusted grade point average scale implemented by OPRF teacher Fiona Hill. It lowered the score for an “F” to 19 percent.

Seems fair.  PJ Media adds additional information:

The school district’s website is oozing with wokeness, including this gem regarding ‘trans’ students:

Students are not required to obtain a court-ordered name change and/or submit medical or psychological documentation as a prerequisite to being addressed by the name and pronouns that correspond to their gender identity or to having the name and/or gender marker that correspond to their gender identity included in the district’s electronic database.

That means if 14-year-old Carl decides he is now Carla, the school system changes the name, no questions asked.

Oh well.  Maybe Carl/Carla will have a place in the Marines:

No mention of whether LGBTQWERTY22++–students are required to maintain any academic standards, but how could the school possibly uphold DIEJ justice if they required actual learning and academic performance?

Final Thoughts:  Obviously, any school that in any way buys into DIE lunacy loses all credibility as an educational institution.  We can be certain non-white students are entirely excused from civilized behavior to eliminate any statistical disparities in school discipline.  What they’re actually doing in Illinois, and elsewhere, is tacitly admitting Black and other ethnic students are too stupid and/or lazy to meet minimum academic standards.  To require them to do that would violate DIE/woke ideology, so in order to somehow atone for past racial sins about which no one currently living had any part, they must instead destroy the futures of the students they claim to champion.

This sort of child abuse is also a fortuitous boon for teacher’s unions.  Pity them.  They’ve only recently been forced to return to actual teaching as the Covid hoax is no longer working, and they’re not adjusting well to actually having to work.  They lost the knack, if they ever had it.  Ensuring “equity” in grading will go a long way toward helping them ease back into actually teaching, in the sense they’ll never have to really teach again.

After all, nothing says “racial justice” like graduating black and other ethnic students who can barely read, or can’t, and who have no marketable knowledge or skills for even entry level jobs, to say nothing of any of the habits necessary to hold an entry level job or become productive citizens.

That’ll show all those evil, so hard to find, white supremacists, and all those evil teachers and parents who think merit matters and a child’s grades ought to reflect their learning and performance.  What racists.