According to reports from a suburban Chicago newspaper and the slides of the school’s presentation to teachers, the Oak Park and River Forest High School will require teachers to adopt a new grading system based on race.
The high school is the only high school in the twin city school district outside Chicago, famous as the home to many Windy City mobsters.
“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,” reported the West Cook News, a community newspaper in Illinois that concentrates on government news.
The plan is for the staff and teachers to read books in common that promote grading equity during the rest of the 2022 year and then implement the ideas as proposed in the half-dozen books by 2023.
“Traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap,” according to the slides from a professional development meeting held May 26.
The slides say that teachers “are successfully exploring and implementing more equitable grading practices such as: utilizing aspects of competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book, and encouraging and rewarding growth over time.”
In 2019, the school adopted a racial equity policy, because white students, who make up 56 percent of students, outperform Black (20 percent), Hispanic (12 percent) and multi-racial students (9 percent).
The district did not address the performance of Asian students, who make up 3 percent of the study body and outperform all students.
“We believe it is our responsibility as an institution to identify and remove unconscious biases and system-wide barriers that inhibit success for all students,” said the racial equity statement at the school district.
“To achieve racial equity we must work to address the root causes of inequities, not just their manifestation,” the statement said.
Total enrollment has remained relatively steady throughout the COVID crisis but has gone down among Black students by about 16 percent since 2018, according to the Illinois School Report Card, which compiles official stats for the state on school performance.
Part of that may be because black students accounted for 43 percent of “F” grades in the district in 2021, according to a district report from Patrick Hardy, executive director of equity and student success, Kristen McKee, coordinator of learning analytics, and Laurie Fiorenza, assistant superintendent for student learning.
While the number of “F” grades among black students is down from 52 percent in 2018-2019, it’s apparently not enough.
But of course, that’s the point of “equity” in grading.
When schools struggled under lockdowns for COVID, rather than finding solutions that worked, schools lowered standards, such as eliminating Ds and Fs.
Now the trend has caught on, and experts are eager to cash in, using race as an excuse for easy solutions that really don’t help black students do better.
One of the leading books about equity in grading, “Grading for Equity” by Joel Freedman, is essentially a front for consulting services sold by the author.
Behind Freedman stands the Crescendo Education Group, which makes money by charging school districts by offering consulting services that do everything from teaching teachers to evaluating schools to changing the grading systems of entire school districts based on Feldman’s theories.
“Think about it — in the professional world, you get redos all the time,” Feldman told the Los Angeles Times in support of eliminating homework, attendance and bad grades.
“When you’re late to a meeting at work, it’s not like they dock money from your paycheck. Your boss might ignore it the first time, and then the next there might be a conversation about why you’re showing up late, and the importance of meeting expectations,” Feldman said.
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Hair-brained is one term that comes to mind; all students within these schools will be tainted by transcripts that may or may not be worthless. Students who excell, no matter what color or ethnic background, will be hampered after graduation because higher education and employers will have no clue to the integrity of the grades on transcripts. The integrity of the school system is at stake, the idea of equity is a ruse to cover up the poor performance of the education system itself and the victims will be the students.
Racism at its finest!
The Democrat have NO integrity in ANYTHING!
This treasonous, socialist Democrat Party and their corrupt puppet president’s treachery knows no bounds.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing.
But to this treasonous, socialist Democrat Party and their corrupt puppet president, it is Just Fine to discriminate against all races and genders EXCEPT the Negro race and Women/HeShes. It doesn’t matter even if one can not read or write, but is a Black Female and/or a LGBTQ, You are superior to others and are given advantages above all others in this puppet F… Joe Biden administration.
Has the left, EVER HAD any integrity?
The insanity and treachery of the treasonous, socialist Democrats know no bounds.
Now if you are Black, you don’t have to learn to read, write, or do math to get high grades. You don’t even have to attend school if you are Black in order to graduate with honors.
Working hard, studying, learning no longer is required to become a professional Negro.
“The plan is for the staff and teachers to read books in common that promote grading equity”,,,,apparently after 50 years of competition and failure they have finally given up on the MLK concept of equality to turn to forced equity. If as Mark Twain stated “Clothes make the man, naked people have little or no influence on society” these Chicago race based equity enforcers now trade in the American coat formerly made from the cloth of many colors, for black, the fitting symbol of the death of a once vibrant nation, now reduced to the equal distribution of the poverty of the socialist ideology that always leads to the poverty of empty stomachs that always follows empty heads as the ditto heads with no ability to create try to turn us all into ditto copies of their own failed selves. In eliminating zeros from their grade books they think to eliminate zeros from the their ranks of zero accomplishment people of their party but only the equity of their poverty in solutions and ideas follows. This is not a human condition, but one of fattened herd animals fit for the slaughter.
BECAUSE to the left, requiring the blacks to DO just as good as everyone else, is raccciiissssttttt!
the united states is un-recognizable.
the country has been turned to fruit salad.
“Traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap,” according to the slides from a professional development meeting held May 26.”
Historically, we have some of the finest schools in the world—prestigious institutions that promoted and fostered academic excellence. Over the years they have fallen prey to Leftist infiltration and now we have some nice buildings that are staffed with some of the most ignorant people on the planet. Asinine stupidity now trumps educational achievement.
John Kerry stood before a group of people and touted how honorable it is to be stupid (and he should know). Ketanji Jackson—an aspiring Supreme Court Justice, who graduated from Harvard, mind you, can’t tell you what a woman is. We have a PINO who wants to employ the Coast Guard in fighting “climate change”. If ignorance is bliss, we have just about achieved Heaven on Earth.
COMMENT -worse than that- she was too stupid to just stand up and say –I AM A WOMAN–harvard education very over rated-
How can blacks not be outraged by this nonsense? The DNC and their ilk are openly saying that without help, blacks are not as intelligent as Whites? When will blacks finally leave the DNC completely? How can they not take offense to this overt racism?
TOO many it seems have been brainwashed for life.
The South lowered standards and we are now in the bottom of education. The other problem is employer s now give everyone a basic math and english test. Most can’t pass it.
AND this is why so many firms, hire from overseas!
It’s a double edged sword. White sprinter will now have to run 60 yards in the 100 yd dash. On basketball court a white’s basket will count double etc.
No it won’t.. WHITES are ‘privileged’, so won’t get ANY HAND UPS In this sort of bull.
sounds an awful lot like –EBONICS—
dese doese and dems-and every one gets a participation trophy-unfortunately
everyone except the white kids and asians -stays dumb–especially the teachers-
teaching is tough enough -stop playing games with the lives of students –
teach -math and science and english -stuff they will need in the real world-
just maybe go at a slower pace for the dumber kids –
should just have a separation by intelligence –
top 20 % go to one class -the idiots go to another class
Hopefully the teachers call BS on this nonsense! Why should they have to double their workload, and do two sets of gradings, one for “disadvantaged minorities”, another for White kids? And the so-called leaders in IL, CA, and NY wonder why folks are fleeing their states!
To me it makes ALL student grade suspect. I think black students will ultimately suffer the most under this scenario. People will question whether they got a legitimate A or “woke”. And a grade doesn’t change the facts. A big public, inner city high school in Baltimore gave a reading assessment to 628 students. 77% had a reading level of fifth grade. 71 read at a kindergarten level, 88 students read at a first grade level, and 45 at a second grade level. That equates to 32.5% of the total test population. These were high school students. Only 1.9% of the students read at grade level. And the school graduates only 61% of its students. So what reasonable business owner or hiring manager will hire a student from a Baltimore inner city high school. NOT ME.
Me neither.. HELL, i’d wonder HOW they even filled out an application, let alone, wrote out a resume!