Tracking a child’s progress as well as the professors’ ability to teach traditional core curriculum - English, math, history, and science - has been done since approximately 1000 B.C. The ancient Greeks used assessments and considered it part of the learning tool-kit.
In 1646, Harvard demanded exit exams in order to attain a degree. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, put into place the first grading scale in the United States in 1785.
Grades ensured education was humming by holding three parties accountable: parents, students, and teachers.
In another move to fix something that isn’t broken, there’s a growing trend to implement “equitable grading.” In the name of “equity,” students will face zero penalties for civil disobedience and skipping class. Additionally, there is a robust push to remove “bias in assessment,” which means eliminating grades. This doesn’t merely punish children who work hard and responsible parents who have inculcated good principles and lavished continual guidance unto their progeny. Removing standards so everyone does well means no one does well. Accountability from parents, students, and educators is stripped.
We have seen the results. A six year old shot a teacher in Virginia. Students in 55 Chicago public schools aren’t able to do math or read at grade level proficiency. NYU fired Maitland Jones, an organic chemistry professor, after 350 students threw a tantrum and signed a petition crying his class was “too hard.” The Nation's Report Card has confirmed the educational disaster: approximately 75 percent of American kids are academically behind in reading and math and not grade level proficient. Does this sound like the plan to lower standards of academic excellence and civil obedience are good ideas?
As bad as school is, it is about to get a lot worse and parents, just as in 2020, have no clue what is coming. Employers should be terrified, as well as taxpayers.
Pushing out the traditional teachers has created an easy access avenue for newer and younger ones who are beset with activism to “teach” students, rendering grades irrelevant. Anyone can teach a grievance and anyone can pass a grievance challenge.
When did “equitable grading” really begin? Years ago. However, like so many terrible implementations, it was hidden from parents and shrouded under social justice. It was mainstreamed during COVID and fast tracked under the cover of Black Lives Matter (BLM), which gave way to Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Create the problem; create the solution.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) pressured the CDC to keep schools closed. As a way to throw parents off the track that kids were in academic freefall and educators were in dereliction of their duty, certain practices came into place. Attendance was ignored (former New York City Mayor de Blasio refused to say how many kids attended the first day of classes in New York’s public schools). Grades were inflated, providing “evidence that [they] don’t reflect objective measures of achievement.”
SATs have been dropped by many institutions, and the LSAT and MCAT are under assault, pitched as racist. In fact, the closest thing to perfection and so-called anti-racism are tests relying on knowledge, pragmatic thinking, and preparation because they wholly exclude race. Somehow, the progressive left got their meathooks into a system that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty from all walks of life and turned meritocracy into racism by planning a hostile takeover of the educational complex, turning victors into victims.
Parents, lest you think “equitable grading” is solely at public schools and your child(ren)’s exorbitantly priced private school is immune, think again.
Joe Feldman is the creator of “equitable grading.” He “lead[s] the institute [and] is a trusted source within NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools).” Select private schools, feeders to ivy leagues, the ones with the largest endowments and significant waiting lists, have opted into accreditation. This means they are beholden to the public school curriculum. Feldman’s consultant fee from NAIS is a mystery.
Let this sink in: independent schools are no longer independent. The one main difference between the two is cost. Academically, they’re simpatico to independent schools that have opted into accreditation (check your private school’s website to find out if it has opted in). This means they are managed by NAIS, the railhead of evil.
Feldman says, “Academic performance during school closures is more likely to reflect racial, economic, and resource differences.” Based on “equity”, NAIS is committed to removing “traditional grading practices…[that] reinforce century-old beliefs about students' academic and intellectual capacities [because it] perpetuates opportunity gaps, creates more stressful classrooms, and unintentionally rewards students with more resources while penalizing those with fewer material and financial supports.”
Translation: Let’s get rid of something that has worked for centuries and replace it with something that has never worked.
Equity is the single greatest threat to America. It is racially motivated and not even helping the people of color it disingenuously pretends to support. Academics are dumbed down to such a mindblowing degree, business owners risk bankruptcy if they hire its graduates.
We’re already seeing both Fortune 500 and small businesses alike fold. The only reason they hire this current crop of graduates is because the government has financially threatened them, forcing DEI staff upon them as well as ESG initiatives. The only beneficiaries to the racist ponzi scheme of so-called equity are race baiters, the government, and bureaucratic factotums.
The fix for public and private school parents alike is to compel private school parents to understand what accreditation is. Then, to make sure private schools don’t opt into it. Otherwise, the school choice argument is dead on arrival - the only choice is paying a fortune to get the same dumbed down education.
