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San Diego Public Schools Will Overhaul Its Grading System To Achieve 'Anti-Racism'

PoS

PoS

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reason.com

San Diego Public Schools Will Overhaul Its Grading System To Achieve 'Anti-Racism'

San Diego's public schools want to be anti-racist, so they're…abolishing the traditional grading system? "This is part of our honest…
reason.com reason.com

District officials evidently believe that the practice of grading students based on their average score is racist, and that an active effort to dismantle racism necessitates a learning environment free of the pressure to turn in assignments on time. As evidence for the urgency of these changes, the district released data showing that minority students received more Ds and Fs than white students: Just 7 percent of whites received failing grades, as opposed to 23 percent of Native Americans, 23 percent of Hispanics, and 20 percent of black students.


Under the new system, students will not be penalized for failing to complete assignments, and teachers will give them extra opportunities to demonstrate mastery of subjects. The grades they receive upon completion of a course will no longer reflect their average test and assignment scores. "Common grading practices such as averaging a student's grade over time can disadvantage students who started the year behind grade level and can discredit the progress a student has made, experts have said," noted The San Diego Union Tribune.


The new approach—which is rather confusingly written—still includes letter grades, but these will reflect student's "mastery" of the subject rather than their completion of homework, quizzes, and tests. What constitutes mastery is left unexplained. Grades "shall not be influenced by behavior or factors that directly measure students' knowledge and skills in the content area," which sounds like a recipe for highly subjective grading. And a great deal of leniency will now be given to students who don't do the work for a course, including those who don't show up at all: Attendance can no longer be a factor in grading.
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Jesus. PC and woke gone amok.
 
Mexican-Americans. Not sure why they always say "Hispanics" when the failing grades in that school district is heavily concentrated on Mexican-American students. These aren't Cuban, Argentinian, and Peruvian students, they are 95% or more Mexican-American students. Any remaining demographic in that group would be Salvadoran and/or other central American. But a much smaller slice of the group.

The issue here is not about a system which is racist, the problem is due to a cultural lack of priority for achieving academic excellence in the Mexican-American barrios in the San Diego school district. If their parents don't take education seriously, neither will the kids. If the parents don't demand correct behavior in class, why would the kids come to school with a attitude eager to learn?

To claim the failure is due to a racial disadvantage; basically blaming White / Euro-centric curriculum and culture is horsefeathers! If so, why do Asians (who last time I checked are not Euro-centric), do so much better than Mexican and Black students in that district... generally even better than the White students?

All a policy like this does is create the lowest common denominator for standards. I fail to see how that helps Mexican-American students once they enter the work force. But hey, makes some people "feel good" I suppose. Makes your typical virtue signaling White liberals feel like they are combating their own white guilt and systemic privilege. And it makes the uneducated parents of these children feel like they are victims of a stacked deck and not actually responsible for their children's own failure in school. So much easier to blame failure on racism than to own up to their own part in it. A 'D' or 'F' grade is EARNED in the same manner that an 'A' or 'B' grade is EARNED. How hard is it to master a typical California high school curriculum which currently is about equal to what a 5th grade curriculum used to be 40 years ago?

Proof that the liberal progressives are planting the seeds for future voters at every step along the path in public education in these liberal states and cities. Keep them dumb, and keep them on the government teet.
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
So do you deny that systemic racism plays a role in race differentials in grades? What creates the achievement gap if not for systemic bias?
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Systemic racism my ass. The answer is obvious: you got students with bad study habits and parents who dont care. Asian students do the best on the average academic wise- moreso than whites. The reason: their parents demand good grades.
 
PoS said:
reason.com

San Diego Public Schools Will Overhaul Its Grading System To Achieve 'Anti-Racism'

San Diego's public schools want to be anti-racist, so they're…abolishing the traditional grading system? "This is part of our honest…
reason.com reason.com



Jesus. PC and woke gone amok.
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Have to disagree with you on this one. Teachers have been putting their thumb on the scale for longer than I ever was in school. Some curved, some scaled, some threw out your lowest test score, some gave you the higher of your term average or your final exam as your final grade. I had one math teacher who had to change her scaling system because of me as she always did the difference between the highest grade and 95 was added to everybody's scores and I usually got 100 so she couldn't scale the grades and I was getting a ton of crap from others in the class about that who were pressuring me to do worse so they could get the bonus points. I didn't even have to take most of my exams in high school because of the higher of your average or the final exam and I already had A's.
 
Drawdown said:
Have to disagree with you on this one. Teachers have been putting their thumb on the scale for longer than I ever was in school. Some curved, some scaled, some threw out your lowest test score, some gave you the higher of your term average or your final exam as your final grade. I had one math teacher who had to change her scaling system because of me as she always did the difference between the highest grade and 95 was added to everybody's scores and I usually got 100 so she couldn't scale the grades and I was getting a ton of crap from others in the class about that who were pressuring me to do worse so they could get the bonus points. I didn't even have to take most of my exams in high school because of the higher of your average or the final exam and I already had A's.
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I dont see how scaling grades has anything to do with institutional racism. At all.

In school, it was easy to tell who would flunk and who would pass- the ones who threw spitwads and erasers were usually the former. Public school isnt that hard- if you dont skip days, pay attention to what the teacher is teaching and do the exercises, there's a good chance you'd get a passing grade. Students who cant do these basic things shouldnt be allowed to pass.
 
PoS said:
I dont see how scaling grades has anything to do with institutional racism. At all.

In school, it was easy to tell who would flunk and who would pass- the ones who threw spitwads and erasers were usually the former. Public school isnt that hard- if you dont skip days, pay attention to what the teacher is teaching and do the exercises, there's a good chance you'd get a passing grade. Students who cant do these basic things shouldnt be allowed to pass.
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Scaling gives someone an A for effort. I see no reason they can't come up with other ways to do the same.
 
Drawdown said:
Scaling gives someone an A for effort. I see no reason they can't come up with other ways to do the same.
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Maybe, but that sort of thing is merely subjective. Why not quantify it by determining grades via exams like they always do?
 
PoS said:
Maybe, but that sort of thing is merely subjective. Why not quantify it by determining grades via exams like they always do?
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my point was earlier that like they always do isn't exactly true. One I left out is that I have had a few teachers/prof's along the way that gave students wide latitude. You can do an exam, a paper, a project or a presentation or some variation thereof for your grade as opposed to "Here is you exam. Now begin...." in order to give students wider options based on what interested them or at least was there stronger suit. Why not one kid come up with an original rap retelling of some part of Odysseus's journey, and another group act out some part of it, and another paint a scene as opposed to a test? Just test after test after test is demoralizing to a lot of students.
 
PoS said:
Systemic racism my ass. The answer is obvious: you got students with bad study habits and parents who dont care. Asian students do the best on the average academic wise- moreso than whites. The reason: their parents demand good grades.
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That was the right answer 50 years ago.
 
I'm not sure if changing the grading scale is going to do anything, since fundamentally it's knowledge and application of that knowledge that counts.
 
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Drawdown said:
my point was earlier that like they always do isn't exactly true. One I left out is that I have had a few teachers/prof's along the way that gave students wide latitude. You can do an exam, a paper, a project or a presentation or some variation thereof for your grade as opposed to "Here is you exam. Now begin...." in order to give students wider options based on what interested them or at least was there stronger suit. Why not one kid come up with an original rap retelling of some part of Odysseus's journey, and another group act out some part of it, and another paint a scene as opposed to a test? Just test after test after test is demoralizing to a lot of students.
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Demoralizing? Standardized tests are the only objective way to determine if a student knows the lesson or not. Kids shouldnt be coddled. Its a tough world out there and they need to be prepared for it.

mrjurrs said:
Sounds like you've never been in the classroom.
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What a moronic statement.

mrjurrs said:
That was the right answer 50 years ago.
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Let me guess... you were one of those students who got thrown out of class by the teacher?
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
So do you deny that systemic racism plays a role in race differentials in grades? What creates the achievement gap if not for systemic bias?
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So you deny that systemic racism plays a role in race differentials in grades?
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Yes
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
So do you deny that systemic racism plays a role in race differentials in grades? What creates the achievement gap if not for systemic bias?
Click to expand...
Yes, I deny it. You know how many black teachers, black administrators, black principals, black school board members there are now? So they're all racist? There isn't a chance in hell that's true. But you go ahead and do your little grading curve system if it makes you feel better. When they go out into the real work, the outcome will be the same. The real world doesn't give a **** about your fake grading system, and that's a fact.

Let me tell what I see. This isn't about making them smarter, it's about a fake grading system to ultimately get them into college easier. This about getting them into those liberal indoctrination schools easier, so they can learn to be good little Marxists.
 
PoS said:
Demoralizing? Standardized tests are the only objective way to determine if a student knows the lesson or not. Kids shouldnt be coddled. Its a tough world out there and they need to be prepared for it.


What a moronic statement.


Let me guess... you were one of those students who got thrown out of class by the teacher?
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Another post, another example of 'you've never been in the classroom have you'?
 
mrjurrs said:
Another post, another example of 'you've never been in the classroom have you'?
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So you did get thrown out of class. That explains it.
 
PoS said:
So you did get thrown out of class. That explains it.
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That's all you've got? I did get tossed for chewing gum in 8th grade. You know nothing jon snow.
 
mrjurrs said:
That's all you've got? I did get tossed for chewing gum in 8th grade. You know nothing jon snow.
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Then dont chew gum until after school! What's so hard about that?
 
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