Portland will fail students by not failing them
Zachary Faria
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Portland is one of those genuinely fascinating places in the country where seemingly any and all terrible ideas come to fruition and all those involved pat themselves on the back no matter how dangerous, racist, or stupid the idea may be.
The latter two perfectly describe Portland’s “equitable grading practices,” which are now being considered by Portland Public Schools. The policy would give students full credit for assignments even when they are caught cheating and would give at least 50% credit for assignments that are incomplete. There would be no penalty at all for late assignments.
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That would be the stupid part of the policy, but what would be the racist part? Well, the project is aimed at addressing “racial disparities” and “inequities” and claims to be “bias-resistant.” In other words, the people in charge of Portland Public Schools think minority children are lazy, dumb, and cheating, and only by accommodating incomplete, late, and plagiarized work can they achieve the same grades as anyone else.
Cue the self-congratulatory applause. “The practicing of the skill is different than showing mastery of it,” PPS Chief Academic Officer Kimberlee Armstrong said. “And that’s really what we want to happen.”
Instead, Portland will get neither. Children who have no motive for trying to do any of the work will do none of it. They will neither practice nor master any skills. Why would they, if all the school district is going to do is give them credit for their “work” whether it is good or not, on time or late, or even whether it is not done at all? Portland will simply make its students dumber, including the minority children it claims it is trying to help. They will eventually head out into the real world and think everything is supposed to be handed to them. They will have no skills or work ethic.
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At the end of the day, that is what “equity” is all about. Changing rules or standards so that no one is a failure also means that no one is a success. Students who do the work on time and to the standards that are expected will get similar grades to students who do nothing at all. Equity will have been achieved, and then those students who were coddled for doing nothing will flounder in the real world, having received nothing from their schools but an attitude of entitlement.
Armstrong and everyone else in Portland Public Schools considering this policy are failing their students in a different way than simply giving them poor grades. Then again, Portland wouldn’t be Portland without all the failures cooked up by delusional liberal bureaucrats.