The term “equity education” is a misnomer: it has nothing to do with fairness. Rather, it has everything to do with dumbing-down academic standards. It also carries racist undertones.
From as long as most New Yorkers can remember, high school graduates had to pass Regents exams to receive a diploma. But in the name of “equity education,” they are doing away with it. Soon students will be able to graduate by showing “knowledge and skill” in seven areas, including something called “cultural competence.” If this sounds like another diversity and inclusion game, it’s because it is.
The education gurus promoted this idea worked on the New York State Blue Ribbon Commission on Graduation Measures, and made their recommendation to the New York State Education Department. So reassuring to know it is a “blue ribbon” panel. Their idea of academic excellence is to water-down standards: proficiency in math and science are no longer required.
Why the change? The savants will tell you it has to do with “equity.” In actuality, it has to do with racism. Liberal white racism.
In 2020, 71 New York City schools had English Language Arts proficiency rates below 20 percent and 100 had math proficiency rates below 16 percent. That put them among the 250 lowest-scoring schools in the state.
Instead of demanding more from all students, regardless of race, the education establishment is bent on lowering standards. The reason we are lowering standards is because we are lowering expectations, and the reason for that is because too many educators have given up on black students. Instead of helping them to clear the bar, they lower it.
Black students can learn as well as white students. But they have to be challenged, and they have to go to schools that insist on traditional educational norms. For example, black students who attend New York City charter schools outperform black students in traditional New York City public schools by 35 points in math and 23 points in English.
Seattle was one of the first to experiment with “equity education.” Math courses were replaced with classes on “power and oppression.” Guess what happened? Math scores crashed. That’s because students were taking “math ethnic studies,” meaning they had to explain how math is “used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color.”
This insanity lasted a few years before even the liberals in Seattle said “enough is enough.”
If white liberals were not so eager to throw in the towel, they would not be giving up on black students. Ditto for black leaders such as New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman. He was the founding principal of a New York charter school, and his black students excelled. Now he wants to do away with charters, consigning these students to schools that are so bad that those who teach in traditional public schools more often send their children to a charter or private school.
We need to get over the image of white racists being red-necked hillbillies. Today they often wear suits and dresses, and typically have some alphabets after their name.
