A new letter — “J,” for “justice” — has apparently been added to the “DEI” — “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — mantra. And, as with most progressive ideas, it will lead to the exact opposite of what it claims to promote.
In the name of DEIJ, the administrators of Oak Park and River Forest High School, near Chicago, are preventing teachers from taking important aspects of an education into account — such as showing up for class, comportment, and turning in assignments — when grading their students. From the West Cook News story:
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.
I can’t think of a more effective way to hurt students of color and impede their success as adults than to relieve them of the responsibility to comply with the requirements and efficiencies basic to receiving a good education. Talk about the bigotry of low expectations.
But “equity,” don’t you know!
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.
If black students are accepted into colleges because they have benefited from unwarranted grade inflation — but are not prepared to succeed because they never developed the discipline and life skills needed for diligent scholarship — they are being set up for failure. How does that help them either in school or in life?
I predict that the DEIJ criteria will transform all affected high-schoolers into “C” students — which stands for “chaos.”
Update: In the wake of the national media firestorm generated by the West Cook News story quoted above that grading standards would be changed to help African American students, the OPRF High School issued a statement denying that a final decision to implement the described grading policy has been made. It is worth noting that the School’s statement does not deny that the changes in policy reported by West Cook News are under active consideration. Nor does the statement deny that they were discussed in the May 26 meeting. Rather, that changes in current grading policy would require a public meeting before implementing and that has not happened.
Let us hope that the national fury this story generated dissuades the OPRF High School — and other educational institutions contemplating such advocated “equity” policies — from taking the kind of actions described as they would hurt the very students the proposed changes are supposed to help.