Teachers across America overwhelmingly oppose “equitable grading,” which is Marxist double-speak for woke rigged grading, according to a recent survey.
While claiming to fix “social inequities” by adjusting grading standards, some half of American schools are actually manufacturing an educational crisis where students are given grades they didn’t earn and the “inequities” are either created or perpetuated. One of the biggest societal gaps in America today is the educational gap, and woke policies are widening rather than closing that gap.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute released a report this month titled “‘Equitable’ Grading Through the Eyes of Teachers.” These policies include allowing some students to retake tests and quizzes without suffering any penalties, lowering standards, not giving grades for homework or class participation, and even awarding partial credit for uncompleted assignments. The Fordham Institute aimed to discover precisely what wokies don’t want to know — if so-called equitable grading is actually effective and helpful.
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A whopping 81% of teachers believe that the policy of giving partial credit for homework that isn’t turned in (otherwise known as “no zeroes”) by students is harmful or very harmful, per the survey data. That includes 75% of “teachers of color.” The Fordham Institute emphasized that around 50% of American schools now have implemented policies like this, and they don’t work.
A slight majority of teachers (56%), the Fordham Institute reported, also said that having no penalties for work turned in late is harmful, while 37% condemn unlimited retakes. As for basing grades partly on class participation, 59% of teachers rate it helpful, and 44% rate grading homework helpful. “Equitable grading” rejects both. Meanwhile, the Fordham Institute found 71% of teachers believe having high standards for every student is important.
The Fordham Institute cited experts, including Meredith Coffey, to explain that “equitable grading” policies “tend to reduce expectations and accountability for students, hamstring teachers’ ability to manage their classrooms and motivate students, and confuse parents”.
Indeed, rather than leveling the playing field, or giving greater advantage to certain ethnic and racial groups, the children whose schools use the policies have much worse educations and experience the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Radicals like Ibram X. Kendi want to claim grading is racist or classist because it’s an easy complaint to make, rather than addressing the much deeper issues in the American education system like ill-trained teachers, broken families, leftist indoctrination, ineffective teaching methods, administrative incompetence, and more. Inflated grades are a disservice to students, which is why in 2023 American students had the highest GPAs on record but the lowest ACT scores in decades.
In the 19th century, many black American educators like Booker T. Washington set a gold standard for education. The problems afflicting all American students now aren’t because grading is “racist,” they reflect much deeper societal and ideological flaws. And “equitable grading” is no solution, it is part of the problem.
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