Equity Grading in Schools Deserves a Failing Grade

The American education system continues to erase its commitment to accountability, academic standards, achievement norms, end-of-course exams, and other marks of rigor. Standardized tests are unfair, classics racist, and school accountability oppressive. And now student grades are being chipped away, too.

Throughout the past decade, bestselling books have advanced an ill-begotten theme called “equity grading,” arguing that it’s traumatizing to assign failing grades or unfair to accept only written math problems instead of diagrams, spoken word poems, or plays about it. As early as 2013, entire states such as Oregon experimented with these theories, nixing penalties for late assignments and grades for homework.

About the Author

Daniel Buck

Daniel Buck is a research fellow and the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network at the American Enterprise Institute.

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The American education system continues to erase its commitment to accountability, academic standards, achievement norms, end-of-course exams, and other marks of rigor. Standardized tests are unfair, classics racist, and school accountability oppressive. And now student grades are being chipped away, too.

Throughout the past decade, bestselling books have advanced an ill-begotten theme called “equity grading,” arguing that it’s traumatizing to assign failing grades or unfair to accept only written math problems instead of diagrams, spoken word poems, or plays about it. As early as 2013, entire states such as Oregon experimented with these theories, nixing penalties for late assignments and grades for homework.