Oak Park-River Forest High School's In Chicago Is Preparing To Implement "Equitable" Grading

Oak Park-River Forest High School's in Chicago is preparing to implement "equitable" grading policies, an essentially race-based grading system. The stated goal of this new system is to adjust classroom grading scales to account for skin color or the ethnicity of its students.

A slide used in the presentation explained that the move is necessary, because traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities.

According to West Cook News, at a meeting held on May 26, Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Laurie Fiorenza, presented to School board members, a plan entitled “Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading”. That is politicizing a very important aspect of the learning process – legitimate evaluation of educational standards.

The plan calls for what Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF) describe as-

“competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book…encouraging and rewarding growth over time.”

- West Cook News

As such, teachers are being instructed how to measure student  “growth”, all while keeping the school leaders’ political ideology in mind.

Essentially, students, depending on their race, will not be held accountable for misbehaving in school, missing class, or failing to turn in assignments. The plan effectively allows students to  literally not do their school work, not participate in class or lessons and be graded on their “need” to pass a given subject (maybe even their whole curriculum) with favorable grades.

Sadly, the OPRF administration will require teachers (next school year) , to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color and/or ethnicity of its students.

The article further noted that, according to the Illinois State Board of Education, 38 percent of sophomores fail the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Statistically, this failure rate was reportedly 77 percent for black students, 49 percent for Hispanic students, 27 percent for Asian students, and 25 percent for white students.

These are abysmal rates to be sure, but does relieving students from responsibilities, teach real growth or does it simply send the message that striving for excellence in learning is unessential because the color of their skin somehow disables them?

This plan basically educationally cripples them – setting students up in life to expect all others to grant them special dispensati9n for poor compliance, effort and a focused lack of dedication to the task of learning. This is tragic.

Associate Director of the Educational Advisory Board, Margaret Sullivan, which consults for

colleges and universities, was reported to have said that-

 (teachers have to recognize when) “personal biases manifest.”,  adding that  “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”.

- Margaret Sullivan

At the meeting, Assistant Superintendent Fiorenza called for this change because of a recent report that demonstrated a spike in “F” grades in the 2020-21 school year. This educational time frame (during the pandemic) only serves to illustrate how poor the educational process was prior to the pandemic and still remains so. She continued-

“OPRF’s administration will adopt language that makes and keeps the system visible and continues to name racism as a complex interconnected structure,” adding that “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.”

-Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning

These students are slated to become introspective regarding the scholastic injuries, that have labeled them because of their ethnicity, creating an ongoing and widened gap racially, that students may never recover from.

This socialistic handicap with its crippling emotional / social outcomes is the reason why America’s youth are falling behind the rest of the worlds populations instead of leading the academic charge. Again, this kind politically based thinking will be America’s undoing. The price these youth will pay will be steep.

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