The Voice of San Francisco is reporting that San Francisco Board of Education Superintendent Maria Su has found a solution for the declining scores in the public schools: lowering the standards for better grades. It is known as the New Grading for Equity plan. That is far easier than actually teaching students to meet basic proficiency levels. Even in the uber-liberal district, parents were outraged and there are reports that the plan is now dead.
The Voice reports that:
Superintendent of Schools Maria Su plans to unveil a new Grading for Equity plan on Tuesday that will go into effect this fall at 14 high schools and cover over 10,000 students. The school district is already negotiating with an outside consultant to train teachers in August in a system that awards a passing C grade to as low as a score of 41 on a 100-point exam.
…It is buried in a three-word phrase on the last page of a PowerPoint presentation embedded in the school board meeting’s 25-page agenda…While the school district acknowledges that parent aversion to this grading approach is typically high and understands the need for “vigilant communication,” outreach to parents has been minimal and may be nonexistent….
Grading for Equity eliminates homework or weekly tests from being counted in a student’s final semester grade. All that matters is how the student scores on a final examination, which can be taken multiple times. Students can be late turning in an assignment or showing up to class or not showing up at all without it affecting their academic grade. Currently, a student needs a 90 for an A and at least 61 for a D. Under the San Leandro Unified School District’s grading for equity system touted by the San Francisco Unified School District and its consultant, a student with a score as low as 80 can attain an A and as low as 21 can pass with a D.
It is grading for equity rather than education.
The school district is not the first to “solve” the problem by lowering standards to guarantee greater success.
Public educators have continued to lower proficiency requirements and cancel gifted programs to “even the playing field.” The result has been to further hide the dismal scores and educational standards of many public school districts.
Teachers and school boards are killing the institution of public education by treating children and parents more like captives than consumers. They are force-feeding social and political priorities, including passes for engaging in approved protests.
Faced with abysmal scores, particularly for minority students, school boards and union officials have called for lowering or suspending proficiency standards or declared meritocracy to be a form of “white supremacy.” Gifted and talented programs are being eliminated in the name of “equity.”
At the same time, we have previously discussed how schools have been dropping the use of standardized tests to achieve diversity goals in admissions. Cal State dropped standardized testing “to level the playing field” for minority students.
The result is that colleges and universities are dealing with students who lack proficiency in basic subjects. This year, Harvard University was forced to introduce remedial, high-school-level math courses for its students due to falling scholastic standards.
Notably, this “Grading for Equity” plan was not revealed to the public, as the district reportedly set about training teachers on the plan while preparing for the likely backlash. All of this was easier than getting the teachers and their union to improve their performance. San Francisco has the third-largest expenditures per student at $23,654. Yet, they wanted to lower the standards to improve their statistical success artificially.
Of course, the losers will remain the students who graduate without basic proficiencies in an increasingly difficult job market. These administrators and teachers are leaving them in the same vicious cycle with little real opportunity to escape.
Yet, these same unions and teachers oppose every effort to fund vouchers to allow families to seek schools that can offer their children a real future. Democratic politicians have joined that opposition in preserving this failing system. The status quo has remained unchanged in these major cities for decades, as politicians replicate the same generational failures.
See Daniel P. Moynihan’s “Defining Deviancy Down” written all the way back in the 1990s. He was spot on and way ahead of his time.
This has been going on for decades. I took the SAT in 1970, and I was the only person in my high school to get over 700 on both sides of the SAT. Now such a score is commonplace, because they have been changing the test to make it easier to get a high score. Now colleges and universities are throwing out the SAT or other standardized tests as a criterion for evaluating applicants. When you couple that with the relaxation or elimination of grading standards, you end up with people being graduated as “experts” in their fields who impose their own biases and self interest on everybody else. Is it any wonder that there is so much corruption and incompetence in government and the corporations that the govt is co-mingled with?
* . One thing you might try levels 1-8 , instead of children changing classrooms for various subjects have single subject teachers change classrooms. The preparation time is extreme otherwise. It just can’t be done satisfactorily in today’s world. Computer science teachers teach just that in multiple classrooms. Math same idea, reading, lit same etc. After several years of prep time with given frameworks, standards, materials, plans, scope and sequence the teacher might have a ballgame.
One idea
The best idea is to teach. It seems to me the goal here is to dumb the students down until they know nothing. It has been going on for years and it seems absurd to solve the solution with the same sort of purposeful neglect with great intent to destroy any possibility of an educated public by any means possible.
*. Go do the job then tell us what you think. 😂.
It’s just all wrong in logistics.
*. That’s the evil part of envy. To dumb down, to destroy, to tear up…yes, that is the effort in upside down world.
This is just a logical extension the “every student is just as smart, diligent, and deserving as every other student” movement shoved into public education by teachers’ unions beginning decades ago. IIRC, the first installment of this kind of bovine excrement was “grading on the curve”
I believe Bush ’43 coined the term “No child left behind”. The fact is, we should be focusing on the top 2/3rds because the bottom 1/3rd is never going to learn squat.
* Sure they can but it may not be college prep.
As a teacher in one of the districts that is at the heart of the insanity, please know that teachers’ unions are not the drive force behind this. At my school, teachers are equally divided on these grading policies. In fairness, there is a bit more nuance to these policies than what is being communicated in the media. Having said that, they are still disastrous. Low standards are bad for teachers. If for no other reason, “idle time is the devil’s play thing.” Students who aren’t challenged become bored, and bored students become disruptive. Beyond that though, teachers really do care about their subject matter and believe that student comprehension of the that material will help them in their lives. Superintendents and school boards love these policies because they increase graduation rates and decrease parent complaints. That is the driving force.
Harrison Bergeron sends his regards.
Exactly.
*. Yes exactly but in upside down world its permanent kneecapping and shoulders broken and every other violent freedom to act out including murder and child mutilation. I’m entitled to murder. Envy has always been around but usually discouraged.
Not worth living is it? It’s always there but hidden. It’s judas the friend of Jesus. It’s the bad guy hanging at the side of Jesus crucifixion. They’re always there.
C. S. Lewis warned us all about this in Screwtape Proposes a Toast,
“In that promising land the spirit of I’m as good as you has already begun something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as we ourselves will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – “parity of esteem.” An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.”
https://screwtapeblogs.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/screwtape-proposes-a-toast/
C.S. Lewis was a prophet of the 20th Century. In That Hideous Strength, he invented a British organization called NICE which stood for the the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments. It was a front for spiritual evil. In modern day Britain, there is an organization called NICE, which stands for the National Institute for Healthcare Excellence (an ironic title). I wonder what it is a front for?
It is a front for illness in upside down world.
I have noticed the tearing up of what others have. It’s the place of envy. MIT is studying poverty traps. The quality of tearing down is the singular expression of poverty traps existing in no other trap, MIT. The insistence of doing ill. The insistence of using and discarding. The insistence of leave it worse than it was found. It’s envy.
From the same essay,
“Now, this useful phenomenon is in itself by no means new. Under the name of Envy it has been known to humans for thousands of years. But hitherto they always regarded it as the most odious, and also the most comical, of vices. Those who were aware of feeling it felt it with shame; those who were not gave it no quarter in others. The delightful novelty of the present situation is that you can sanction it — make it respectable and even laudable — by the incantatory use of the word democratic.”
OMFK called Lewis a prophet. No exaggeration there!
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/19/12/grading-equity
Here’s an article from 2019 (from Harvard Business School) explaining what “Grading for Equity” actually is.
It’s…. not as outrageous as people are saying on here. Unfortunate name, since it seems to trigger people. But the concepts don’t sound very farfetched to me.
Graduate School of Education, not the Business School.
I don’t care what they call it but Not requiring work to handed in on-time does not prepare students for the real world and is short-changing businesses who need to hire qualified people.
*. The tools available today aren’t being employed effectively. It’s similar to DOGE identifying the archaic system used in social security-related errors.
Long ago the failures in schools just went into farm labor and no one worried about it. Today, every child must go to Havard or Yaletown…
The problem once the children are adults is the difference in money, the economics of it. The farm laborer wants the same things as the business mogul or basketball star. Consumerism may be the problem? I drink Kool aid and you drink champagne. You have the best medical care, I have none….big problem this education thing.
Do you want autos or donkeys? The laborer can’t invent the auto but the engineer can do farm labor is the idea. A population would be wise to reward it’s geniuses well.
*. Evaluations? It’s computerized. Print out, take home. Oh mom, I didn’t do the evaluation. I didn’t want to. Remedial is computerized and reevaluated. . Oh dad I didn’t do that either…. reinforce? Oh yeah, nope. I was surfing the net.
Oh look, I did it all and moved on. Oh look, I didn’t need to do 100 times the same thing cause I mastered it while teacher was teaching 87 foreign languages…and what gender you want to be.
Blah blah…
Jonathan: The MAGA crowd keeps asking “When are we going to start winning?” Not anytime soon according to the latest economic data. Here’s what it shows:
–Weekly jobless claims increased sharply to 240,000. The number of people collecting unemployment checks in mid-May was the largest in 31/2 years.
–Corporate profits fell $118.1 billion in the first quarter.
–The economy is contracting at 0.2% in the first quarter.
Didn’t see any of that when Joe Biden was in charge. The stock market was booming, corporate profits were up and jobless claims were way down. But there was one clear winner at the end of the first quarter 2025. It was DJT. He hauled in $2.5 billion for his various crypto ventures. The DJT family net worth has increased $2.9 billion–and that doesn’t include the $400 million dollar Qatar 747 “flying palace”! Quite a haul! And the MAGA crowd that showed to his rallies during the campaign? They put a lot of their life savings into DJT’s Bitcoin and they lost their shirts. They are still asking “When are we going to start winning?”
(violins)
Joe Biden was in charge? Wo knew?
Who, dammit.
Latest(???) economic data? Looks bad? The economy has been “trending” in this direction over many cycles—and presidents! “When Biden was in charge” [and we all know he was’t] you thought things were better? And now you think the economy contracting, unemployment, corporate profits falling are all Trumps fault?
Lets review modern history: Thanks to offshoring industries and jobs to China (Bush Sr. and Clinton), bailing out “too-big-to-fails” (Obama), and COVID (Trump and Biden), all the negative economic factors you mention were set in motion. A failing economy doesn’t happen in 5-months. Your claim, brushing aside too many contributing factors, are sycophantic and bizarre.
As for the hauling-in [ALL politicians do it], how do you cry about one politicians family cashing-in, then praise another lifelong politician, like Biden, who never produced or earned anything outside politics (but influence peddling), and still became a millionaire?
How Schools Use Taxpayer Money Meant For Poor Students To Push Leftist Ideology
https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-schools-use-federal-dollars-meant-for-poor-students-to-push-leftist-ideology
Over the last few years, 57 school districts have spent $19,180,758.90 in federal funding to contract with organizations and consultants for far-left programming. Funds granted under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), and its reauthorization via the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), have been used to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), equitable grading practices, race and sex-based programming, restorative practices/restorative justice (RP/RJ), social emotional learning (SEL), and other far-left ideologies.
Details here:
https://defendinged.org/investigations/hijacked/
Pedagogy of the oppressed = Abysmal scores (and performance). Leftist programming toward the dumbing-down has been going on for years. Not only has the progressive agenda, “grading for equity” been illogical, it’s been doing its damage for years—to make sure general public was unaware of how bad it was getting, the progressives at the useless Department of Education stopped or blocked the publishing of U.S. educational rankings internationally. It’s bad, real bad.
According to the Colleg Fix, “Among the most serious problems contributing to K-12 science education’s decline, they noted, were a general degradation of standards, loss of rigor, push for equity, and overemphasis on certain pedagogical approaches that may sound appealing in university lecture halls but prove inappropriate in K-12 classrooms.” https://www.thecollegefix.com/science-professors-sound-alarm-on-k-12-education-push-new-stem-franklin-standards/
This is all true. I saw it happen, tried to PUSH BACK the tsunami, and it was impossible….If you grade with a standard, you are PUSHED OUT.
These progressive policies are a huge dis-service to these students. They will graduate without the ability or knowledge of even the basics. They will not be employable. Who would hire someone who could not even read how to operate a machine, do basic math. Are we going to see areas where these kids graduate, are not employable, cannot even fill out a resume or apply to a community college? If you want to see a town, city or even state have a educated citizens, you start with your education system. That will attract companies who are looking for a educated pool of people to pull from. Not saying it has to be college educated. But at least able to read and do math.
Your words are so true Upstate.
It’s a shame the dems can’t get it.
One doesn’t need to be educated to be willingly purchased and enslaved by ‘welfare’.
Who would hire them you ask ????
Obviously the companies that bring the low skill, low wage jobs back from China to make America Great Again
Go MAGA !!!!!!?
That is where you are ever so wrong.
As we all know, jobs coming back to America will not be low skill or low wage jobs. They will be at least well paying, working class jobs. Then there will be other better paying skilled, higher education jobs.
What are lowering the bar education, K-12 education, progressive agenda, offering? The dumbing down of America high school grads. Meanwhile those states, cities and towns who keep to a higher bar than the progressive agenda, will have a higher graduation rate to real terms and a better employment rate. We will have Red States that have higher employment rates, higher living standard rates than blue state, cities or towns as their lower bar high school equality students cannot read or do math.
As the failed states of CA or OR have proven, the progressive agenda is nothing more than a road map to failure.
How marvelous!
MAGA states will continue to produce, educated, skilled workers. Workers companies will want to employ. Blue states will continue to produce low bar education graduates who cannot read, write, do math or communicate effectively who are not employable. No one will want to hire them. Blue states will become the third world countries of America. And they are doing it to themselves. We are seeing it happen right now.
How marvelous!
You are completely and utterly delusional
The vast majority of the jobs in question are low skill, low wage assembly jobs.
As an example, Foxconn is the Chinese company that makes most iPhones.
They also make 40% of all other consumer electronic goods sold here.
They employ 1.3 million people to do very low skill assembly jobs.
They employ mostly semi-literate peasants from rural areas who are unable to find any other employment.
They get paid about $2 US an hour.
These are the only jobs that companies like Apple could bring back to the US, and obviously they never will.
The good lord made the nutty professor Klump blessed inside and out.
All you got to do is believe in yourself and you can do anything. Chemistry sure is important. Learning begins at home.