OPRF to implement race-based grading system in 2022-23 school year
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
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.
“Traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap,” reads a slide in the PowerPoint deck outlining its rationale and goals .
It calls for what OPRF leaders describe as “competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book…encouraging and rewarding growth over time.”
Teachers are being instructed how to measure student “growth” while keeping the school leaders' political ideology in mind.
“Teachers and administrators at OPRFHS will continue the process necessary to make grading improvements that reflect our core beliefs,” the plan states, promising to “consistently integrate equitable assessment and grading practices into all academic and elective courses” by fall 2023.
According to the Illinois State Board of Education, 38 percent of OPRF sophomore students taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) failed.
The OPRF failure rate was 77 percent for black students, 49 percent for Hispanics, 27 percent for Asians and 25 percent for whites.
"Signal and reinforce districts’ DEIJ values”
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.
Sullivan calls grading based on traditional classroom testing and homework performance “outdated practices” and foster "unconscious biases."
"Teachers may unintentionally let non-academic factors—like student behavior or whether a student showed up to virtual class—interfere with their final evaluation of students.," she said. “Traditional student grades include non-academic criteria that do not reflect student learning gains—including participation and on-time homework submission."
School districts across the U.S. are "experimenting with getting rid of zero-to-100 point scales and other strategies to keep missed assignments from dramatically bringing down overall grades," according to a March Associated Press report . "Others are allowing students to retake tests and turn work in late. Also coming under scrutiny are extra-credit assignments than can favor students with more advantages."
The report interviewed science teacher Brad Beadell of Santa Clara, Calif., who said he has "stopped giving zeros and deducting points for late work" as well as allowing students "unlimited retakes for quizzes and tests."
Fiorenza called for a switch to race-based grading last August, after issuing a report chronicling a spike in "F" grades by OPRF students in the 2020-21 school year.
"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."
Last year, West Cook News reported on an adjusted grade point average scale implemented by OPRF teacher Fiona Hill. It lowered the score for an "F" to 19 percent.
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So predictable. Yet so tragic.
The damage racialist educators is doing keeps multiplying.
the way this came about was with an enormous frustration with No Child Left Behind, which was put in place in 2002. School districts across the country were given 12 years to reach what many consider to be an untenable goal - to have 100 percent of students, every child, reach proficiency in grade level in reading, writing and math by the 2013/14 academic year.
Those damned liberals causing schools to have 100% of students meet the same proficiency, in an untenable length of time.
one of the key architects of No Child Left Behind, and that's Eugene Hickok, who was a deputy secretary of education under George W. Bush .
Oooops.....
Did Obama change it?
Has Biden changed it?
Making excuses for such a fucked-up policy shows no real interest in education at all.
Justify this fucked-up policy all you want.
Would YOU hire someone who can't pass basic classes without being graded on a curve based on race alone?
Maybe a lesson on who voted FOR the No Child Left Behind Act is in order:
H.R. 1 (107th): No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 -- GovTrack.us
Well, well, well, looky there!
More Democrats voted FOR the Act than did Republicans.
Your poor attempt to blame a political party once again falls flat on its face.
It's as if they watched the movie "Idiocracy" and thought it was a goal to shoot for. I keep wondering when people are going to say, that's enough! We never seem to reach that point. I keep saying we're doomed. I'm never joking when I say that. We are seriously screwed. The ship is sinking and so, so many don't seem to care.
I would never allow my grandchild to ever go to a school doing that. What OPRF proponents call competency based, I call flat out incompetent! I want my granddaughter going to a school where where she is noted for her academics and accomplishments that she earns on her own, not handed to her because of the color of her skin. Fortunately, we don't have or put up with that OPRF and DEIJ garbage in the school district here in SE Arizona where I live. I sincerely pity the students of those two skills mentioned in the article.
Oh, man.
I fully expected the source to be the Babylon Bee or some other satire site.
These idiots are simply fucking NUTS.
THIS is the crap that people laugh at and some get riled up over.
Ah............"the soft bigotry of low expectations" quote from Michael Gerson came to mind.
The woke crowd is probably going ga-ga over this.
I guess we need more burger flippers in the world.
In a few years same people that came up with this will complain these students are unprepared.
I don't know, they've been unprepared for years. My ex-sister-in-law's daughter years back had a boyfriend while she was a senior in high school. I believe she kept this boyfriend just to piss off her mother... This guy could not read a menu, had to have the menu read to him. Found that out when we all went out to dinner... oy..
According to the woke left, there is nothing wrong with education in this country that throwing more money at can't fix.
The parents of kids attending these schools should rise up, make the school board change this dumbass policy, or toss the bums out of office.
These are the kids they want to have free college tuition....
So 2 + 2 = 5 provided you have the correct skin tone... yeah, what could go wrong
"The OPRF failure rate was 77 percent for black students, 49 percent for Hispanics, 27 percent for Asians and 25 percent for whites. Sullivan calls grading based on traditional classroom testing and homework performance “outdated practices” and foster "unconscious biases."
What they appear to be saying is that blacks as a group are intellectually challenged and need special concessions and lowered standards.
sounds that way
Will they make a conversion chart ?
Will they add points to one group or subtract points to those who do better?
I don't know about grading systems but I think most of the so called learning problems is kids don't want to learn.
I was talking to a friend of mine who is a kindergarten teacher. Got some insight. She said they came out with a new rule that kids have to sound out words without looking at a picture of it, or something like that. She had a battle with administrators because she had a poster the showed letters and how to sound them. Like showed a man eating an apple. Showed where people were using their arms and air writing the letters. Administration was trying to make her take them down. She said it shows how to sound out letters (what they wanted) and also almost how to write it out as they are doing the motions.
Also how different teachers teach. She says she tackles problems with the kids head on while some teachers just yell at the kids and make them put their heads down on the desk.
It was kind of enlightening to how the system works and different teachers do their jobs.
They mean increase their graduation rates and in order to do so penalize those that work hard.
Meh. It's a bunch of stuff taken out of context.
As long as white kids can still blame their missing HW on dogs that eat paper white people will continue to get over.