Top Down Equity

The San Diego Unified School District had a problem. Or at least it thought it had a problem.

In the first semester of the 2019-20 school year, the San Diego Unified school district board discovered that 20% of black students had received a D or F grade. In comparison, 7% of white students earned the same failing marks.

This reflected what’s called the “education gap,” that black students do worse than white students. This is where one might be inclined to ask the uncomfortable question, “Why?” But not San Diego.

School officials decided that the 13% racial disparity was a function of systemic racism, requiring an “honest reckoning as a school district.”

Ah, the amorphous yet meaningless bogey man of our disparate times, “systemic racism.” A school district that wanted to help failing students might consider why they are failing. There are likely a multitude of reasons, from poverty, meaning homelessness or the lack of a computer and internet access, to a lack of bourgeois values.

But if the school district wanted to help the 20% who were failing, the first step would be to figure out why. The buried lede is that 80% of black students weren’t failing. What were they doing that the 20% were not? If the vague yet inexplicable “systemic racism” was the culprit, why did it leave 80% alone and only go after the 20%?

No matter. There are two ways to deal with disproportionality. One is to fix it. The other is to change the rules to make it disappear. San Diego chose the latter.

In October, that “reckoning” led the San Diego board to vote unanimously to “interrupt these discriminatory grading practices.” Rather than attempt to replicate the factors empowering the 80% of black students who achieved passing grades, the board’s first action to “be an anti-racist school district” was to dumb down the grading system for all. Under the new protocols, all 106,000 San Diego students are no longer required to hand in their homework on time. Moreover, teachers are now prohibited from factoring a student’s classroom behavior when formulating an academic grade.

If the marginalized students are getting bad grades, get rid of grades. Problem solved. Except the only problem solved was the apparent outcome, that 20% were failing, by snapping their fingers and proclaiming “No one shall ever fail again!” The other problem, that they weren’t being educated, that they weren’t taking responsibility for being educated, that they were disrupting other students’ education, wasn’t as easily solved.

Read the mission statement of virtually any educational organization, and you will likely find earnest language seeking to attain “equity” by “closing the racial achievement gap.” Instead of seeking educational excellence for all, school reformers have become fixated on erasing disparities, most frequently the underperformance of black children relative to their white classmates. The problem of course with this color-bound thinking is that achieving “equity” only allows a black student to reach a average white peer’s potential, not his or her own — maybe higher — potential.

Ian Rowe, who ran a network of charter schools in New York before joining AEI, calls this the “soft bigotry of anti-racism,” a play off the “low expectations” theme that has become the driving force in eliminating racial gaps, disparate outcomes, as the “anti-racism” movement picks up steam. The concern is that the incoming administration will succumb, if not embrace, this approach to education as a means of making the appearance of disparate outcomes disappear.

Early signs indicate that President-elect Biden and whomever his choice for Secretary of Education will likely prioritize the need to “advance racial equity.” But let’s not adopt “anti-racist” agendas that actually plant the seeds of white superiority and black inferiority, instead of eliminating them. The antidote to racism is not anti-racism. It is a philosophy of humanism that celebrates and uplifts the inherent dignity in each individual. And the antidote to inequity is not diminished expectations for all. It is equal opportunity, and a belief in each person’s capacity for upward mobility, no matter their race, ethnicity or skin color.

We’ve seen this is a great many ways, from woke math to pink bridges. If the demands of excellence produce inequitable outcomes, then get rid of the demands. And to be fair and equal, get rid of the demands for everyone, because why should white students be required to get their homework in on time if black students aren’t? Of course, asking why black students aren’t getting their homework in on time would be racist, as if black students weren’t capable of such things because of “systemic racism.”

As Rowe contends, this is not only wrong, but condemns black students, as well as white, to a future of mediocrity at best.

We were determined to ensure all young scholars, regardless of race, developed a faith in their ability to do hard things. Our goal was for students to believe in themselves, and not be swayed by the false rhetoric that any student of color would be incapable of handling basic requirements — like handing in homework on time — just because of their race.

The point isn’t to leave the failing students behind, although denying the fact that some students have the potential to be “scholars” and some are going to hold less intellectually taxing jobs. This isn’t “because of their race” unless it’s made because of their race, by well-intended guardians of equity telling black kids they don’t need to work as hard, think as hard, as white kids.

What San Diego Unified School District is doing is harming students with the best of intentions. Unless it’s of the view that black students are just too damn incapable of performing as well as white students, of learning the material, of behaving in class, of adding numbers and conjugating verbs, then the only thing it’s accomplishing is guaranteeing mediocrity at best. But it won’t have a racial education gap, even if the price is student failure, which is all anti-racism demands of education. If you can’t bring the bottom up, bring the top down. Equity achieved.