nivek
As Above So Below
San Diego schools try untested radical agenda to push for mediocrity
San Diego Unified schools are facing a crisis of intentionally designed mediocrity. The desire to slash honors courses and upend traditional grading stems from the same bad philosophy animating its top leaders.Their vision is captured by Marcia Gentry, director of the Gifted Education Resource Institute at Purdue, who claims that a test is "not really a raw ability test. Otherwise it would yield equal numbers among all groups of people." In this line of thinking tests are clearly racist because as of today there are outcome disparities associated with race.
In a recent article in the San Diego Union Tribune, Richard Barrera, trustee on the San Diego Unified School District argued that determining a student’s intelligence via a test is "silly." The paper paraphrased, saying he described the tests as "outdated and rooted in racism."
Barrera makes the argument that personal recommendations from parents and teachers are a better metric to judge a student’s educational capabilities than actual tests. Barrera is moving the district toward eliminating advanced honors courses, and toward a pass-fail based grading system, where nobody is allowed to fail, because nobody is allowed to excel.
This will prove disastrous if left unchecked. The argument that academic testing was created to institute a racial hierarchy is a flat-out lie. It is a lazy solution that will take us down the dangerous path of leaving our students unprepared for the challenges of the real world.
Recently, Patrick Henry High parents were stunned to discover that some honors courses were no longer available to students. In the wake of public outcry this was amended and has since been seemingly resolved. However, I’m of the strong opinion that district leaders are going to try this again and try it everywhere. I don’t believe they are sorry they did it. I believe they are sorry they got caught and didn’t properly brand the agenda.
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