Back when the Great Stupid was really picking up steam in 2020, the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), the second largest school district in California with over 106,000 students, announced that it would be overhauling how students will be evaluated as part of a larger “a larger effort to combat racism.” The school board voted unanimously to eliminate yearly grade averages. Meeting deadlines for assignments and classroom behavior would not affect academic grades. The district decided to de-emphasize discipline and penalties for cheating.
This crack-brain approach to education, essentially rejecting everything that had been learned over centuries about how students learn, was justified as way to eliminate the accumulated deficits of “systemic racism.” Soon “Diversity Equity Inclusion” budgets exploded and almost every school system jumped on board the latest fad. This was reparations, not education; no respectable research supported the theory that holding minority kids to lesser standards would help them succeed, but never mind: Fact Don’t Matter to ideologues and race-hustlers.
Now come Jay P. Greene and Madison Marino of the Heritage Foundation’s Center on Education Policy with a study suggesting that black and Hispanic students had “significantly greater learning loss during the pandemic in the school guided by diversity officers than those schooled in districts without one.” Minority students lost more ground than their white classmates, especially in math, the researchers found. “Racial achievement gaps went from bad to worse in these districts.” Of course they did: having an official directing policy who insists that black and Hispanic students not be held to the same standards of behavior or academic achievement as other students—must combat that structural racism!—was guaranteed to undermine minority student success.
The news gets worse: nearly half of the school districts with at least 15,000 students employ a chief diversity or equity officer, and the number is 89% for districts with more than 100,000 students, the study found.
Ugh. Again, the nation has been wounded by the “Facts Don’t Matter” woke ideologue approach to pubic policy. As I recounted in the post about San Diego’s idiocy, as the the executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s public policy research foundation I recruited iconoclast sociologist Amatai Etzioni to write a report eventually called “Self-discipline, Schools, and the Business Community.” The publication explained his research indicating that accountability and the development of such life-competencies as meeting deadlines and following through diligently on assigned tasks weren’t incidental benefits of education, but the most crux of education itself. Those are the skills essential to preparing young human beings for work, life, and success, he argued. Etzioni, explained why the development of character and ethical values ought to be the primary goal of schools, which Etzioni’s research showed, were “neglecting the development of the children as human beings” in his assessment, in the 1980s.
So the Great Stupid DEI whores said, “Hold my beer!” Though Etzioni’s report was praised across the ideological spectrum and received widespread publicity (See here, here, and here for example) it was quickly ignored. The habits it designated as crucial were exactly the behaviors much of the black community undermines, and self-discipline and accountability are not what a group led by activists whose message is to reject accountability wants to hear. Today, such habits as showing up on time, respecting authority and seeking excellence are often derided as white supremacy values. Amitai was in his 90s and retired by the time these bizarre and toxic ideas became toxic; it’s too bad he wasn’t in his prime. Etzioni was prickly and brilliant, and did not suffer fools gladly: it would have been a blast hearing him definitive squash an ideologue who called his conclusions “white supremacy.”
Ethics Alarms 
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
Must keep the gravy train intact for as long as possible.
I wonder why Hispanics were included?
Why would the U.S. owe reparations to them?
Does that make sense?
Of course, the United States owes reparations to Hispanics, D.G. We stole the entire western half of the country from them. If that hadn’t happened, the entire west coast and the intermountain west would look like, oh, say, Portland! Or Mexico. Wouldn’t that be great? Hispanics are of color, therefore, they are oppressed by people not of color, therefore, they are owed virtually everything. Capice?
Hispanics get drawn into the minority spoils system like dolphins in tuna nets. “Of color” made it all possible.
I’m labeled as “caucasian”, but when I hold a white piece of printer paper next to my skin, I appear to be way more “of color” than white.
I’m excited for the check to arrive!!
This actually undermiens the case for affirmative action.
Hispanics were no more oppressed than Slavs.
Dear God, I agree.
Some points –
Again, I may be all over the place, but my passion for what TRULY makes this country great hopefully may somehow come through:
1. Nobody will spend more time in purgatory than race hustlers. They have capitalized on a bullshit premise that does nothing to help their people’s plight, but to only line their own pockets. If they were true to their cause, they would preach to their own people that the family is where the root cause of their issues are. Not the outside world. That is sad.
2. To the people that think this lax education shit is a good idea:
How does being dumber better their children’s lives? Forget others for a minute. How does this lax education assessment benefit their children and their kids’ future? What heights can their children possibly attain if low standards are the norm and acceptable? [Damn man – China is laughing in our face.]
3. And this is how all great empires fall throughout history – Taking shit for granted. We are so done if we continue this course.
4. I ask anyone on either side of the aisle – Regarding our enemies [or friends even]:
Who takes Biden seriously? Who the F is afraid of that guy? Who even listens to his ramblings, let alone cares to try discern what the hell he is saying?
5. Our worst enemies – These Muslims that are in a hurry to meet Allah – To them, we are a joke and the devil. But, let’s release billions of dollars to them! What brain surgeon thought that was a good idea?
So stupid. But you all know this. Forgive my late night rant.
Jack and Friends, Good Night and “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World”
FL Principal RESIGNS After Effort To Improve Black Student Test Scores
PWS
So, she was fired for trying to get black kids to try to get better test scores by trying to learn more stuff in school?
Apparently, she did so in a racially-discriminatory manner.
Years ago, my ultra-Liberal father took a stand with which I agreed: When the Commonwealth of Virginia was debating a move to a pass/fail grading system in its public schools, my Dad was furious and attended neighborhood meetings and wrote editorials with one message: The World Isn’t Pass/Fail… Virginia will be doing a great disservice to its young people if they are taught to think differently…”
I agreed with him then, but I’ve come to a depressing new conclusion. The left has indeed turned the worlds of business and government into a pass/fail system, where politics take precedence over performance, where any breach of ethics, rules and laws can be easily explained with liberal cant, and where actual performance-based evaluation is slowly becoming extinct. And we see the result of this every day when dealing with corporate or government representatives. Jokes about the USPS, DMV, e.g., aren’t funny anymore because they are the norm, not the exception.
I may change my screen name to “AA” – for “Aghast Again.”