IL: Chicago suburban schools to introduce race based grading. No more "F"s for blacks

[Brian4Liberty]

Sure. Finland is relevant because what Chicago et al. are doing is implementing Finnish education policies. ( right back at'cha.)

As you yourself noted earlier, Finland is overwhelmingly white - and so obviously, those superior scores are attributable to nothing more than the product of Euro-caucasian privilege.

Get back with me when the increasingly woke and race-obsessed insanities of America's education policies start producing scores comparable to what they used to be in America back in the day (and to hell with Finland). Maybe by then the irony of invoking scores and ranks in defense of policies that explicitly downplay or reject the value of scoring and ranking will have worn off.

My problem with this is that, (and I'm admittedly reading between the lines here, maybe it won't actually be the case) is that white and possibly Asian kids will be held to a different standard than black ones. White kids will still be expected to comply with all the rules, edicts and fatwas but black kids will get a pass, numerous passes from the sounds of it, yet both will achieve the same grade in the end.

This was the case with both of my children, homeschooled from day one and neither were held to a very strict grading system.

But when standards were needed they were both held to the same ones.

I think the real question is this:



Why?

Oak Park is one of the most leftist communities in the US. It is Berkeley or Cambridge of the midwest.

They have spent millions and millions on education trying to change that.

And that right there may be the answer.

I'm curious, are these leftists tacitly telling us that Blacks and some other minorities are incapable of keeping up with White/Asian standards?
And for the record, I'm not endorsing that view, necessarily. Just asking because that's what it looks like to me.

Re-read the article with this framing, and get back to me about Finland..

Democrats do not take into account human motivation in any of their policies.

Every sentence in that article, that's all I could think about.

You can turn in your assignments late. You can re-take a test. You don't get knocked as hard for missing assignments completely. Ban extra-credit assignments. Do absolutely nothing and still receive a passing grade.

How do any of those policies increase the motivation to do assignments or study for tests? They all do the opposite.

Grades used to be the "Go-No Go" gauges.

Now they're oppressive?

Readin', Writin and 'Rithmitic were once required allowing one to ASSume he was dealing with another who had the basic skills to comport himself in life.

Now they're recommending atta-boys instead?

#1 - STOP TEACHING COMMON CORN MATH
#2 - STOP INDOCTRINATING INSTEAD OF TEACHING SELF RELIANCE

There is something else written between the lines here, and that is yet again "it is okay to discriminate against white people" by giving them Fs in school.

Public Indoctrination IS the very breeding ground for the Racial Disparagement between people of all skin color. Divide and conquer. Divide by skin color and make the different groups hate each other instead of looking at those doing the DIVIDING.

Only a fool would let the enemy be in charge of raising their children.

*Sigh* From the article:

It calls for what OPRF leaders describe as “competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book…encouraging and rewarding growth over time.”

The proposal is that NOBODY gets an F. No white kids get an F. No black kids get an F. Some are apparently concerned that since fewer white kids get Fs than black kids the white kids that already don't get Fs are somehow penalized because "non F" is not going to be as "special.' That's it. That's all.

On second thought, we are all putting far too much thought into this. The people who are doing this don't care about teaching kids or having them learn skills to make them successful in life. They don't even like the idea of "success".

Think of this from the perspective of the woke left and their dogma:

Premise: All white people are racist, including teachers. Teachers use things like attendance, homework, discipline, etc, to fail black students, because they are racists.

Solution: Take away all of those factors from grading, so that the evil white supremacist teachers can not use them against black kids.

No need to dig any deeper or consider long terms effects on those kids, or anything like that.

[jmdrake]

On second thought, we are all putting far too much thought into this. The people who are doing this don't care about teaching kids or having them learn skills to make them successful in life. They don't even like the idea of "success".

Think of this from the perspective of the woke left and their dogma:

Premise: All white people are racist, including teachers. Teachers use things like attendance, homework, discipline, etc, to fail black students, because they are racists.

Solution: Take away all of those factors from grading, so that the evil white supremacist teachers can not use them against black kids.

No need to dig any deeper or consider long terms effects on those kids, or anything like that.

LOL. Really? That....that's your argument? Quit thinking? Just accept your pronouncement about what somebody's motivation that you've never met is? LOL. Ummm....no!

[Brian4Liberty]

LOL. Really? That....that's your argument? Quit thinking? Just accept your pronouncement about what somebody's motivation that you've never met is? LOL. Ummm....no!

Yep. Makes it easier. I know plenty of woke leftists, and yes, it does usually boil down to to “sticking it” to the “racists” and Trump supporters.

If you want to talk about what actually might work, that’s a conversation amongst honest, intelligent and serious people, not the woke left.

[jmdrake]

Grades are BS.

Tests mean nothing- I can pass the bar but I don't know a thing about law, so do you want me to be your lawyer? Didn't think so.

The public school system should be abolished, not to mention that many people learn differently. Putting everyone in the same (prison) system & expecting them to all perform exactly the same is even more BS.

^This.

Let everyone learn however they want but do not judge one groups ability differently from another's.

2+2 equals 4 every time whether you're black white or green.

No participation trophies because you can't identify with the question or don't like the person asking it, no returning to the question later when your big toe doesn't hurt or when your hair is fixed properly.

Esoteric or subjective issues should never count toward "education" in a practical sense.

If these 'schools' want to rewrite their curriculum to favor one group and disparage another then their assessment of ability must be called into question. In my opinion their ethics should too.

And nothing in the OP article posted says anything about favoring one group and disparaging another. Nobody said "Lower the white kids grades" or "raise the black kids grades" in the OP article. You know what's really funny? The Montessori educational system, which is grade-less, was originally designed to improve educational opportunities for poor children. But it's only been adopted (in America anyway) in the private sector and it's mostly well to do white people that send their kids there. The parents that send their kids to Montessori education don't sit around hand-ringing over whether the woman who invented it might have cared about educational disparities among ethnic groups and economic classes. Here is some information on Montessori:

How Montessori Students Are Graded
One of the ways that Montessori students are graded is with constructive criticism and feedback on what they do.

Guidance and encouragement. As the students work, the instructors guide them into a more team-based development. Instead of seeing their performance as their final outcome, the teacher encourages the student to continually improve upon what they have already done. This type of “grading” or evaluation helps the students learn what their needs are so they can work on improving them.
Self-assessment. Another way that the teachers grade their students is by letting them give their own assessments. They give the children the responsibility to find their own best skills as well as the areas that they need improvement. By asking them how they think they are performing, it gives them the opportunity to reflect on their own standards of learning. It inspires them to reach further and learn more.

Positivity Over Negativity
By emphasizing the attention on the children’s strong points before pointing out areas where they can improve, it takes the focus off of what they did “wrong.”

Highlighting what a child is good at while guiding toward opportunity for improvement has a more positive effect than pointing out what is wrong and giving them a bad grade. This encourages positivity and reduces the feelings of guilt that negative criticism causes.

There is an absence of the competition and pressure that can cause stress and anxiety in children who are not ready to learn what is being taught.

The grading in a Montessori school is a way of teaching them how to live their life rather than how to get better grades than their classmates. In fact, the Montessori teachers keep track of the children’s progress and introduce lessons according to their individual needs.

Now does it work? I don't know. Our well to do white neighbors wanted us to send our kids to the local Montessori school but we sent them across town to our church affiliated private school. That school had the traditional grading system that some here seem so wedded to. This modest change in Chicago, which only gets rid of F's from what I can tell, doesn't go nearly as far as Montessori in abolishing grades. They only got rid of the F. So? If your child is really motivated by grades then he or she probably doesn't want to get a D or a C either. Does ANYBODY really think that kids who are getting A's and B's are going to be like "Well.....I can't get an F anymore so I guess I'll just quit studying altogether." Sheesh.

[Anti Federalist]

On second thought, we are all putting far too much thought into this. The people who are doing this don't care about teaching kids or having them learn skills to make them successful in life. They don't even like the idea of "success".

Think of this from the perspective of the woke left and their dogma:

Premise: All white people are racist, including teachers. Teachers use things like attendance, homework, discipline, etc, to fail black students, because they are racists.

Solution: Take away all of those factors from grading, so that the evil white supremacist teachers can not use them against black kids.

No need to dig any deeper or consider long terms effects on those kids, or anything like that.

That is precisely the "logic" being used.

Once you parse the word salad, that is pretty much exactly what Oak Park schools are saying:

"OPRF’s administration will adopt language that makes and keeps the system visible and continues to name racism as a complex interconnected structure," she wrote. "We must recognize the unique challenges faced during the pandemic intensify the need for a systemic approach to confronting the racial and socioeconomic discrepancies often experienced by our underrepresented student population."

[jmdrake]

Yep. Makes it easier. I know plenty of woke leftists, and yes, it does usually boil down to to “sticking it” to the “racists” and Trump supporters.

If you want to talk about what actually might work, that’s a conversation amongst honest, intelligent and serious people, not the woke left.

Some Trump supporters are racists. I saw one on this forum imply that Emmitt Till deserved what he got for being a "jerk." For the record Emmitt Till was beat to death for allegedly whistling at a white woman. And yes there has been systematic racism in America. It still exists in fact. As Thomas Sowell elequently pointed out, "racism was a result, not a cause, of slavery." The key to expanding liberty to oppressed groups is not to try to pretend bigotry doesn't exist but to point out that bigotry is universal. Joe Biden is arguably far more racist than Donald Trump. You do the cause of liberty no favors by trying to dumb down the debate.

[Anti Federalist]

A military friend of mine told me a story of when Admiral Rickover, the man who invented the nuclear submarine, actually attempted to drive one! He almost ran it into the ground before the captain made him get off the wheel. Apocryphal? Maybe. Maybe not.

I'll address the rest when I get some more time, but I chuckled when you mentioned Rickover in your reply about standards.

Rickover was well known for being obsessive about high standards and holding men and equipment to them.

He rubbed people the wrong way in yesterday's navy.

I can only imagine how long he'd last in today's "woke" "safe space" navy.

[jmdrake]

On second thought, we are all putting far too much thought into this. The people who are doing this don't care about teaching kids or having them learn skills to make them successful in life. They don't even like the idea of "success".

Think of this from the perspective of the woke left and their dogma:

Premise: All white people are racist, including teachers. Teachers use things like attendance, homework, discipline, etc, to fail black students, because they are racists.

Solution: Take away all of those factors from grading, so that the evil white supremacist teachers can not use them against black kids.

No need to dig any deeper or consider long terms effects on those kids, or anything like that.

That is precisely the "logic" being used.

"OPRF’s administration will adopt language that makes and keeps the system visible and continues to name racism as a complex interconnected structure," she wrote. "We must recognize the unique challenges faced during the pandemic intensify the need for a systemic approach to confronting the racial and socioeconomic discrepancies often experienced by our underrepresented student population."

Once you parse the word salad, that is pretty much exactly what Oak Park schools are saying:

I don't at all find your "logic" in the least bit "precise." You're conflating causation with cure. Has there been systematic racism in America? Yes. You've admitted that yourself. (Racist roads). Was the current educational system, with grades and tests etc, designed to be foundationally racist? I don't think so. Could be. Can something that isn't foundationally racist still be unhelpful in fixing the problem? Sure. And as a white person you should want the problem fixed. Not out of some sense of "white guilt" but out of your own best interests. Private prison corporations base their projections of future earnings based on the number of boys that can't read by the 3rd grade. And yes, an over representation of that number are black boys. Is that because the black boys are stupid or because of a lack of resources? Well one white millionaire decided to find out. Investing $10 million of his own dollars in a poor black community, he was able to raise the high school graduation rate from 25% to nearly 100%. And guess what? Crime was cut in half!

See: https://www.today.com/news/millionai...town-1C9373666

So....it looks like the problem is a lack of resources. Sure. This was a small town. (Only about 3,000 people). But there thousands of other communities of that size and in that condition across the country. Why doesn't this happen more? I don't know. But when I have $10 million to spare myself you'll see this happen at least once more.

[jmdrake]

I'll address the rest when I get some more time, but I chuckled when you mentioned Rickover in your reply about standards.

Rickover was well known for being obsessive about high standards and holding men and equipment to them.

He rubbed people the wrong way in yesterday's navy.

I can only imagine how long he'd last in today's "woke" "safe space" navy.

I'm just going by the story I was told. Apparently it wasn't "safe" to be on a sub he was driving unless you had gills instead of lungs. I'm sure he was academically on top of his game. But again, that could have been apocryphal. Here's something not apocryphal. A Chinese tai chi "master" versus a not very good MMA fighter. Oh...but he got A's in tai chi.



Who would you rather have on your side in a bar fight?

[Brian4Liberty]

Yep. Makes it easier. I know plenty of woke leftists, and yes, it does usually boil down to to “sticking it” to the “racists” and Trump supporters.

If you want to talk about what actually might work, that’s a conversation amongst honest, intelligent and serious people, not the woke left.

That is precisely the "logic" being used.

Once you parse the word salad, that is pretty much exactly what Oak Park schools are saying:

Some Trump supporters are racists. I saw one on this forum imply that Emmitt Till deserved what he got for being a "jerk." For the record Emmitt Till was beat to death for allegedly whistling at a white woman. And yes there has been systematic racism in America. It still exists in fact. As Thomas Sowell elequently pointed out, "racism was a result, not a cause, of slavery." The key to expanding liberty to oppressed groups is not to try to pretend bigotry doesn't exist but to point out that bigotry is universal. Joe Biden is arguably far more racist than Donald Trump. You do the cause of liberty no favors by trying to dumb down the debate.

Yes, bigotry, discrimination and prejudice are part of the human condition. If you want to call efforts to codify these prejudices as “systematic”, fine, but the term has many more implications among the woke Marxists. And codifying those collectivist human tendencies is wrong. Liberty is about individuals being judged and treated as individuals, dare I say judged by the content of their character.

But once again, we are talking past each other. You want to have a discussion about education, and my point is that the woke Marxists behind this don't care about education. That does not mean that there can be not be a “conversation amongst honest, intelligent and serious people” about education. But the average woke Marxists are working on other agendas, with completely different premises and pre-conceptions.

An analogous situation is school shootings. The establishment and most of the woke left claim they want gun bans because of school shootings. Sorry, that is BS. They want gun bans. Full stop. School shootings are a convenient excuse. The establishment wants a monopoly on power and violence, and many of your average woke Democrats just want to stick it to the people they believe represent “gun people”. They have a stereotype in mind, and I will often use the term “Trump supporters”, because that is a term used by leftists with much disdain.

[jmdrake]

Yes, bigotry, discrimination and prejudice are part of the human condition. If you want to call efforts to codify these prejudices as “systematic”, fine, but the term has many more implications among the woke Marxists. And codifying those collectivist human tendencies is wrong. Liberty is about individuals being judged and treated as individuals, dare I say judged by the content of their character.

But once again, we are talking past each other. You want to have a discussion about education, and my point is that the woke Marxists behind this don't care about education. That does not mean that there can be not be a “conversation amongst honest, intelligent and serious people” about education. But the average woke Marxists are working on other agendas, with completely different premises and pre-conceptions.

An analogous situation is school shootings. The establishment and most of the woke left claim they want gun bans because of school shootings. Sorry, that is BS. They want gun bans. Full stop. School shootings are a convenient excuse. The establishment wants a monopoly on power and violence, and many of your average woke Democrats just want to stick it to the people they believe represent “gun people”. They have a stereotype in mind, and I will often use the term “Trump supporters”, because that is a term used by leftists with much disdain.

Piss poor analogy. The harm in banning guns is palpable. The harm ONE school banning F's is....what exactly? Seriously. What? I'm interested in what you or @Anti Federalist or anyone else on the other side of this thread has to say about exactly who is harmed by the banning of Fs. The white kids that aren't getting F's? The white kids that are getting Fs? The black kids that aren't getting Fs? The black kids that are getting Fs? Who do you think is being harmed and why? If AR15s are banned and the we run into a total tyranny SHTF scenario then people are going to wish there were still AR15s. If Fs are banned....?

I can give a personal example of why I believe Fs are bvllshyt. In fact a teacher giving out Fs might in some cases be a sign of a failed teacher. Back to my own kids. Both my kids hated high school geometry because the curriculum was common core (even at a private Christian conservative school) and was just plain awful. When I took geometry it was an easy class between algebra 1 and algebra 2. We learned about theorems and proofs and congruence etc. They still learn all that. Only the basic geometry that should have learned in elementary school but didn't (area, perimeter etc.) got thrown in along with algebraic geometry. (You have to first find which angles are congruent to then find the value of x). So a single problem took a whole page. One of my son's made it through okay (he got a 30 ACT score ultimately). The other failed and had to do summer school. Only the principal was like "Don't worry. Half the class fails every year. We just let them make up the credit during the summer." Seriously? Half the freaking class is EXPECTED to fail? Oh yeah, and this was an overwhelmingly white school so I'm not claiming racism. I'm claiming teacher and curriculum incompetence! Now, what did my child learn from that? In the "automatic make up" during the summer did he become some geometry guru? Nope. It was a fvcking waste of his time. Oh...but they can say the hand out Fs! Big whoopty do! I don't give a rats ass about your concerns about "wokeness." I'm more concerned about kids than your conspiracy theories.

[Ender]

Piss poor analogy. The harm in banning guns is palpable. The harm ONE school banning F's is....what exactly? Seriously. What? I'm interested in what you or @Anti Federalist or anyone else on the other side of this thread has to say about exactly who is harmed by the banning of Fs. The white kids that aren't getting F's? The white kids that are getting Fs? The black kids that aren't getting Fs? The black kids that are getting Fs? Who do you think is being harmed and why? If AR15s are banned and the we run into a total tyranny SHTF scenario then people are going to wish there were still AR15s. If Fs are banned....?

I can give a personal example of why I believe Fs are bvllshyt. In fact a teacher giving out Fs might in some cases be a sign of a failed teacher. Back to my own kids. Both my kids hated high school geometry because the curriculum was common core (even at a private Christian conservative school) and was just plain awful. When I took geometry it was an easy class between algebra 1 and algebra 2. We learned about theorems and proofs and congruence etc. They still learn all that. Only the basic geometry that should have learned in elementary school but didn't (area, perimeter etc.) got thrown in along with algebraic geometry. (You have to first find which angles are congruent to then find the value of x). So a single problem took a whole page. One of my son's made it through okay (he got a 30 ACT score ultimately). The other failed and had to do summer school. Only the principal was like "Don't worry. Half the class fails every year. We just let them make up the credit during the summer." Seriously? Half the freaking class is EXPECTED to fail? Oh yeah, and this was an overwhelmingly white school so I'm not claiming racism. I'm claiming teacher and curriculum incompetence! Now, what did my child learn from that? In the "automatic make up" during the summer did he become some geometry guru? Nope. It was a fvcking waste of his time. Oh...but they can say the hand out Fs! Big whoopty do! I don't give a rats ass about your concerns about "wokeness." I'm more concerned about kids than your conspiracy theories.

Yep- grades are complete BS.

The actual "diploma" was invented by people who couldn't do anything, so they came up with a piece of paper that said they could.

Now that piece of paper says this person is an expert & the person without it (whether it's the next Tesla, Einstein or whoever) is a failure.

[DamianTV]

On second thought, we are all putting far too much thought into this. The people who are doing this don't care about teaching kids or having them learn skills to make them successful in life. They don't even like the idea of "success".

Think of this from the perspective of the woke left and their dogma:

Premise: All white people are racist, including teachers. Teachers use things like attendance, homework, discipline, etc, to fail black students, because they are racists.

Solution: Take away all of those factors from grading, so that the evil white supremacist teachers can not use them against black kids.

No need to dig any deeper or consider long terms effects on those kids, or anything like that.

Abolish the Dept of Education? or just Public Education in general, where mom and dad are home and ARMED? Yeah, cant have school shootings without schools!