Schools in Fairfax, VA, Fighting ‘Institutional Bias’ by Implement ‘Equity Grading’
“Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms”
This is not going to help the students it is intended to help.
The Washington Examiner reports:
Fairfax schools implemented ‘equity grading’ to fight ‘bias’
Officials with Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools have taken steps to implement so-called “equitable grading” at Langley High School and other schools across the district in a bid to fight “institutional bias,” according to internal FCPS communications.
The district’s emails, obtained by local parents through a Freedom of Information Act request and exclusively shared with the Washington Examiner, detail efforts by high school principals across the district, especially officials at Langley High School in recent months, to adopt “equitable grading” practices, including by using federal coronavirus relief funds to purchase a book for a teacher summer reading club titled Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms. The district and Langley administrators also denied the efforts were ongoing when a parent inquired.
The emails also revealed that efforts to implement “equitable grading” at all high schools under FCPS have been in motion for years, going back to 2015, with a notable acceleration in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic as schools across the district remained closed well into the spring of 2021.
“Equitable grading” practices vary based on how the concept is implemented, but the primary stated goal of proponents is to combat “institutional bias” and eliminate racial disparities in grade outcomes through a variety of tactics. Among the least controversial is the removal of grade penalties for late assignments and the ability to retake or redo assignments, often on an unlimited basis.
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I was in Northern VA after my company moved me and my family from California in 96. We ended up in Leesburg (Loudoun County Public Schools) and found many issues with them. Me and my wife ended up going around with the teachers, the admin, and the school board, but we never got anywhere. We ended up tutoring our sons through school. This issue that is happening now with Fairfax and LCPS has been happening for at least 20 years and getting worst.
Each son decided when they graduated to skip college and go to different Trade Schools. It worked out well for both. and the costs they paid were not much and they both have houses, cars, good bank accounts, and salaries around 6 figures.
White affluent liberals and their belief that black kids aren’t capable of living up to the same standards. They’re the anti-racist progressives, don’t forget. They’re better than you!
“Everybody has asked the question, … ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! You’re doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, … let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also.”. — Frederick Douglass (azquotes.com)
Oh, but that’s Raaacist!! It doesn’t matter who actually said it.
Instead of removing penalties for lateness, I remove excuses.
I shouldn’t have to do this, but my students have three ways to verify a deadline.
1. The syllabus
2. The LMS page (e.g. Blackboard, Canvas)
3. A remind.com free messaging service that sends them a text, email, or push notification (their choice) on the day before the assignment is due.
Doesn’t matter: you send them to the office, and the office sends them back.
Even “better,” my school said you had to run the afterschool detention yourself. On your time. Too bad for the students that I stayed after anyway to correct papers and homework (remember those?). I would give them one hour, phoneless detentions and/or make them clean the filthy floors that the children had created during the day.
Oddly enough, I didn’t get a lot of repeats, and attendance was much more timely. Google classroom just removed all excuses for “losing” homework or forgetting assignments, since they could check it on their phones, which they never put down.
So gradeflation has gone racist.
Now that’s what I call systemic racism. The soft bigotry of low expectations codified into the school’s structure.
Blacks and other “preferred” minorities should be outraged.
I get it … the grading curve is skewed in favor of minorities. You’ll never know who learned the subject material and who didn’t. A poor performing student who gets a B grade is still a poor performer. Good luck holding a job … at least until the woke have taken over the world.
Solution: hire white and Asians.
I wish that I could have had that applied to me. I went to school as a Navywife with 3 kids not yet in school. I had to make time in that schedule to study and even do the assignments and paid for it ourselves. I am finding a real disappointment in this whole idea that even if you study and you do your assignments and the one sitting next to you doesn’t even bother to show up for class—comes in the last week if school and they get to do “make-up work” like reading a 150page book and get the credit for that class. Those diplomas mean nothing especially when you go to work—even entry level and know nothing! Oh, you know how to do social media or gaming. Sorry–Happened to both of my kids some 5 years apart so this is a long time being done–
Maybe if the school tried actually teaching school stuff — 3 R’s, civics, PE — (gasp!) like they’re chartered to do, and not spending all the day turning them into Woke Social Justice Advocates — ?
Nah. Fuhgeddaboutit. Better woke and broke than competent humans who love America.