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Are Leftists Intentionally Harming the Very People They Claim to Intend to Help?
This perhaps fits in the @drbastiat category of “I don’t understand liberals (leftists).”
It has gotten so much (conservative) media coverage, I assume Ricochetti are probably aware that the San Francisco School District briefly planned to institute “Grading for Equity” in which the only thing that would matter for high school grades was a semester final exam, which the student could take multiple times. Weekly or other periodic exams wouldn’t count toward the semester grade. Completion of homework wouldn’t count toward the semester grade. Attendance and tardiness wouldn’t count toward the semester grade. The numeric scores to convert to letter grades were to be lowered.
The “Grading for Equity” plan has now been abandoned (or at least paused) after a bunch of parent and community feedback. But I wonder about the mindset that would even propose such a plan. To me, the proposed plan would only hurt the students. And so do many similar plans.
OK, first, I am a person who often does not test well. I would hate for my competence to be measured solely by one test. My willingness to show up, to show up on time, to put in some effort were among the important factors to several of my career employers (and to me when I was hiring people).
More broadly, I think like a prospective employer.
Why would a prospective employer consider hiring a graduate of schools like San Francisco’s with a “Grading for Equity” policy? With a policy like the “Grading for Equity” program, the prospective employer has no idea whether the graduate knows how to show up, how to show up on time, how to complete or even put in effort on day-in-day-out tasks, etc. An acquaintance who dealt with high school students explained to me how rare it was in certain parts of the city for students to even understand the concept of showing up at a particular time.
So how does a policy like San Francisco’s proposed “Grading for Equity” plan help the students it purports to help?
I have heard that policies like “Grading for Equity” are supposedly based on “compassion” for “disadvantaged” students. I guess the “Grading for Equity” plan was based on assumptions that certain ethnic or racial groups aren’t capable of completing assignments, showing up on time, or showing up at all. But policies like “Grading for Equity” are most likely to harm the very people the designers claim to be trying to help.
Even forty years ago my then-retired university professor father documented (but did not widely publish) data about the issue of “academic mismatch” (when “affirmative action” places academically unprepared or inadequately prepared high school graduates into colleges and universities for which they are not prepared, those students flunk out or drop out, never to return, rather than have the achievement by graduating from a “lesser” institution for which they were better prepared academically).
Artificially inflating grades for certain categories of students only reduces the confidence prospective employers (and I suppose college admissions administrators) might have in the student’s capabilities. That is only going to hurt the students.
Is this harming of the very people they purport to help an unintentional side effect of leftist policy? Or is it by design?
Published in Education
All any of these grading schemes ever end up doing is pulling the entire student body down to a lower norm. If you don’t acknowledge accomplishments, you won’t get as many of them.
The only principle is power and today’s currency is victimhood and equity. Don’t overthink it. Dems/socialists/communists/fascists will say and do whatever it takes to increase their power. Thus, there are no hypocrites on the Left. There are no double-standards or even single-standards. Power. This will be my answer to any question regarding motives of the Left.
They don’t “intend” to help anyone but themselves.
Yes, “claim” versus actually “intend.”
I presume this plan was dreamed up by compassionate people with really stupid ideas, not wicked people trying to harm underachieving kids.
Will parents of gifted children realize there’s no way for their kids to stand out from the other students when those other students can get the same grades for 20-60% less work? Watch for another exodus from The Land of Assorted Fruits and Nuts . . .
As things stand, we’ve had a couple of decades where many employers view a high school graduate as being approximately equivalent to a high school dropout. If you didn’t go to college, it must be because you were too dumb to get in. If nonsense like “Grading for Equity” catches on, it will only exacerbate this problem. Someone who was a hard-working, diligent high school student will be assumed to be just another low achiever if they don’t go on to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a four-year degree.
Just like with minimum wage laws, the people behind them think they are helping the working class, but in the long run, they are harming them.
Speaking of gifts. This is a gift for the smart and hard-working kids to learn what life is like under communism. The kids can pretend to work and teachers can pretend to give out grades.
For decades, college has been a credentialing service. Since employers are not allowed to give out tests, they rely on colleges to filter the worker pool. Now that colleges have destroyed this by eliminating standardized testing, admission standards, and grading standards they are now useless.
What’s the fix for employers to screen the worker pool? Hire kids from India and China, where testing and numerical meritocracy are common practice. Perhaps some new credentialing service will be created that just does aptitude testing for employers.
and Flakes… that’s why it’s the Granola State/City.
I’ve heard this reason given many times, but I’m not sure it is true. I suppose it varies by state. At the small business in Minnesota where I spent most of my life, every job application form we gave out also had a 20-question math test. Nothing complex, we just wanted to make sure that applicants could do basic math and understood fractions (a lot of people don’t). I once applied for a job in North Dakota as a support technician and took a test of basic computer skills. If you use Indeed.com to search for a job, you can take a bunch of tests on your own computer to demonstrate a variety of skills, and places where you applied can access your test results. Maybe California or Rhode Island forbids any sort of competence testing?
According to the federal government, “Title VII prohibits intentional discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. For example, Title VII forbids a covered employer from testing the reading ability of African American applicants or employees but not testing the reading ability of their white counterparts.”
I think it is far more likely that because most hiring managers are college-educated, they presume that those who did not go to college lack intellect.
I’m sure there are instances where you are correct. What it sounds like is that the school district was offering students to “audit” the classes, then test-out on the final exam. There were people who did this when I was in college, so it’s not a novel practice. That being said, how effective this would be for high-schoolers is an open question. It sounds like it would be of greater benefit to high achievers bored with the standard rigmarole of classes, than it would to students who are struggling.
I can’t entirely disregard that some of the people supporting this are, in fact, wicked and have an ulterior motive for it. What the split (50/50, 25/75, etc.) of stupid vs. wicked actually is, I don’t know.
This also reminds me of my own education. I am one of those dummies who managed to get a college degree that is utterly worthless as anything but a credential. I sometimes think, if I had it over again, I’d have taken the GED and just tested out of the education system at 16. For that matter, maybe get a fake ID and test out when I was 14. I don’t think I’ve ever had a job that required any of my post-Junior High School education. Full time work (or multiple part-time gigs) would likely have been a far more productive use of my time, even if it was just flipping burgers.
Two objectives: First, standards, competence and measured skills are direct results in a belief in objective truth and the essence of Western culture. Getting rid of that to make room for the magic wonderfulness of whatever socialism now thinks it is the operant quest, as evil and insane that may be.
Second, the fully incompetent “victim” classes will be entirely dependent on what the political order provides. Even if they were believe in the value of applied virtues in a free society, their deficiencies mean that their livelihood will depend on the goodwill of whoever is in charge of the revolution. Their frustration and dependency will make the obedient grievance voters to make the revolution possible.
The carrot for unionized teachers is that if competence, intellectual formation and character-building are no longer expected much less assessed, then there is also no standard by which the performance of teachers can be measured. They can preach the revolution or just punch the clock.
I once read of a phone sales technique called “The Ledge”. How it works is that no matter what the guy on the other end of the phone says, you say, ‘great, let’s get together and talk about it!’
The left has but one message, ‘you’re being screwed by those people and only we can save you…through the power of legislation!’
I don’t share your presumption.
If the altimeter shows that the airplane is losing altitude…and you can about a safe and successful completion of the flight…the remedy is not to just cover up that altimeter.
Follow the money:
Wall Street Journal, Schools Are Ditching Homework, Deadlines in Favor of ‘Equitable Grading’
https://crescendoedgroup.org/
What if the difference is only in the eye of the observer? Stupidity is the selective ignorance of some salient reality. It’s the “selective” part that shows stupidity to be a thing of intent.
One of the great questions about so many leftist policies:
Are they implemented by well-meaning people who can’t or won’t look down the road to the bad incentives they are creating?
Or are they implemented by malicious people who seek to create a permanent servant / subject class?
I once had a supervisor at DOE who said the reason he preferred to hire PhDs was because “It proves they’re capable of learning” (Of course, he had a PhD). Those of us in his branch who didn’t have PhDs were a little miffed, but we recognized our boss was somewhat of a flake.
Of course, I had to laugh because in spite of earning an BS and MS, 5 1/2 years in our nuclear navy in submarines, 3 years as a consultant, then coming to work at DOE for the K-Reactor startup project, I was incapable of learning, using his definition . . .
Government schools have been stupidly unworkable for four or five decades. Cut a check to the parents.
This makes me insane.
In college, I made a little coin setting up the newfangled personal computers for PhDs. I set up the VCRs for a few of them too.
Just because one is narrowly if exquisitely educated in one particular field doesn’t mean one can follow unambiguous instructions.
During my father’s days as a professor of engineering he would annoy PhD candidates (who have spent years studying some narrow aspect of their subject matter) questions pertaining to basic physics or elementary mechanical or electrical principles.
It bothered my father a great deal that so many of the “most educated” students lost track of how their work might fit into the wider world in which most people operate.
He did not mind that many of his fellow academics considered engineering to be more trade school than university academic subject. He preferred teaching lower division undergraduate classes and classes for graduate students who were working engineers, and really disliked students who pursued multiple “advanced degrees” but had never worked a real job in industry. He considered most research papers a waste of the trees cut down to make the paper on which the research papers were printed.
This has proven so true in my personal experience it is my default assumption(ie: stupid ideas not wicked motives) . I would only change the word compassionate to normal which is to say they are no better or worse in virtue than my conservative friends.
Know-everythingism isn’t that much better than know-nothingism.
In this interesting TRIGGERnometry interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-hj5uwclmk
Richard Miniter sees one difference between left and right is people that are unaccountable tend to vote left and those that are accountable tend to vote right. Starting at minute 53 through 56 this idea runs through the remainder of the interview. He later goes onto observe that if you are unaccountable you very much resent and think it wrong to be held accountable.
Accept that idea and the policy of holding students unaccountable is perfect manifestation of a general hostility to accountability.
BTW: I much prefer reading an article or essay than listening to a podcast. I much prefer listening to a podcast than watching a video. Alas, the video is all I got.
“Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” – Mark Twain
Some of it is the set of bureaucrats and NGOs who get money by “helping”
you can look at the homeless problem in CA for this
Yes. As I traditionally understood it; standards based education was to help bring up all students to a more fair system. It gave opportunity to under privileged backgrounds too if those students showed up and performed. This was preferable to simply being selected based on relationships or birth.
The standardized test was also supposed to be fair and boost non-connected kids to demonstrate his/ her capability.
Standards based education is also good for the country and society as a whole. Back in the day education was thought to help make better citizens who would then help make a better society. In addition, I think having a solid base to public education boosts the overall competency of the nation. I like having people even in humble positions knowing what’s going on.