San Diego Schools Declare War on Learning

[Elderberry]

Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog 12/29/2020

San Diego previously had a reputation for being one of the sanest large cities in California, resisting the worst far-left lunacy infecting other parts of the state. But possibly not any more, as the San Diego Unified School District looks to go fully woke and eliminate grades for middle schoolers:

    Some school districts are embracing trendy but dubious ideas about how to fight racism in the classroom.

    The San Diego Unified School District, for instance, moved this fall to abolish its traditional grading system. Students will still receive letter grades, but they won’t reflect average scores on papers, quizzes, and tests. Under the new system, pupils will not be penalized for failing to complete assignments or even show up for class, and teachers will give them extra opportunities to demonstrate their “mastery” of subjects. What constitutes mastery is not quite clear, but grades “shall not be influenced by behavior or factors that directly measure students’ knowledge and skills in the content area,” according to guidance from the district.

So, without tests and graded work, what will grades be based on, then? Presumably naked favoritism and fidelity to political correctness, plus punishing students for having the “wrong” skin color. Given recent initiatives, it seems that the fondest wish of many California Democrats is to discriminate against Asians.

    District officials evidently believe that the practice of grading students based on average scores is racist and that “anti-racism” demands a learning environment free of the pressure to turn in assignments on time. As evidence for the urgency of these changes, the district released data showing that minority students received more Ds and Fs than white students: Just 7 percent of whites received failing grades, compared to 23 percent of Native Americans, 23 percent of Hispanics, and 20 percent of black students.

    “This is part of our honest reckoning as a school district,” Vice President Richard Barrera told a local NBC affiliate. “If we’re actually going to be an anti-racist school district, we have to confront practices like this that have gone on for years and years.”

More: https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=46799