Two years ago, disgraced Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a bill that eliminated the requirement to show proficiency in math and reading to graduate from government schools.
Now, the schools in Portland, Oregon, appear ready to take the next logical step in the push to eliminate scholastic achievement and permit a parade of numbskulls to receive a diploma.
The district might soon eliminate penalties for cheating on tests or failing to do assigned work. No more will cheaters and malingering pupils be punished.
Leftist pedagogues call such measures “equitable grading practices.”
No More Dunce Caps
“The district’s initiative aims to address ‘racial disparities’ and ‘inequities’” in grading and instruction, a ‘journey’ that the district began ‘during the pandemic,’” the Washington Free Beacon reported, citing a district handout:
“Grading for equity,” the handout states, includes eliminating “zeros” as a grade—even when a student cheats or fails to turn in a test or assignment. It also calls for no penalties for late work and no grades for both homework and “non-academic factors,” such as “participation, attendance, effort, attitude, [and] behavior.”
The new grading practices, which are expected to be implemented districtwide by 2025 after some classrooms adopted them last year, reflect left-wing efforts across the country to achieve “equitable outcomes” among all students. In California, for example, new equity-focused math curriculum guidelines aim to narrow the gap between gifted and non-gifted learners by abandoning “student tracking” practices that help accelerated learners access more advanced instruction.
“Equitable grading practices” is leftist code for “let’s coddle students of color because they get too many bad grades.”
The new “practices” are “bias-resistant,” the Free Beacon reported, and say that teachers must grade students on their “content knowledge, not on evidence that … is likely to be influenced by a teacher’s implicit bias or reflect a student’s environment,” the handout says.
Teachers who reward hard work and give zeros or failing grades could well be “biased” against students of a particular race or ethnicity.
Actually, the teacher might just be biased against dunces and dimwits, but anyway, teachers must “base grades on summative assessments, instead of classwork, homework, formative assessments, etc.”
The lowest grade cheaters and dummies will get is 50 percent.
And the system’s overall grading scheme will change from 0-100 to 1-4.
Portland Isn’t Alone
Not that Portland is the only district to adopt such a practice. Schools in New York City and San Diego, California, have done so and undermined educational achievement as well.
Yet Portland’s wrecking its schools is hardly surprising. Crazy leftists run the state and its largest city.
Again, Brown signed a bill to permit students to graduate without demonstrating proficiency in arithmetic and reading, and for much the same reason as Portland’s schools will dumb down its grading policies.
Too many “students of color” couldn’t graduate.
The schools enacted that policy because black and Hispanic students failed tests at too high a rate. “Testing on essential skills has historically hurt those with poor test-taking skills who would otherwise graduate,” advocates said.
Add to that another patently crazy policy: tampon dispensers in boys’ restrooms pursuant to the ridiculous Menstrual Dignity Act.
“1 in 5 menstruators in the United States cannot afford the price of menstrual products every month,” the legislative presentation explained. The law “affirms the right to menstrual dignity for transgender, intersex, nonbinary, and two spirit students by addressing the challenges that some students have managing menstruation while minimizing negative attention that could put them at risk of harm and navigating experiences of gender dysphoria during menstruation. Research also connects gender-affirming bathroom access to supporting student safety at school.”
Combining the policies suggests that a 17-year-old “menstruating student” who can’t add 2+2, and fails a test because “xem” is in the “gender-neutral” restroom changing a tampon will not only become valedictorian, but also receive a four-year free ride to Harvard.
H/T: New York Post
