Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: San Francisco Institues New 'Equity Grading' System; Allows
 Students to Graduate With Failing Grades
Date: Sat, 31 May 2025 10:34:01 -0400
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On 2025-05-31 9:46 AM, Nyssa wrote:
> BTR1701 wrote:
> 
>> California once again pulls out into the lead in the race
>> to the bottom.
>>
>> Sounds like Progress! to me...
>>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> https://thepostmillennial.com/san-francisco-students-can-graduate-with-failing-grades-under-new-grading-for-equity-guidelines
>>
>> On Tuesday, the San Francisco public school district
>> announced a new grading policy that will allow students to
>> graduate classes with a score as low as 21%. The "Grading
>> for Equity" method eliminates homework and weekly test
>> scores from a student's final semester grade. Instead,
>> there will be one test at the end of each semester to
>> decide if a student has passed the class. The final exam
>> can be retaken several times, The Voice San Francisco
>> reported.
>>
>> Maria Su, the Superintendent of the San Francisco Unified
>> School District, enacted the new guidelines without
>> seeking approval from the school board, according to the
>> nonprofit. The changes will impact 10,000 students across
>> 14 high schools in California's Bay Area.
>>
>> Students may submit assignments late, fail to attend
>> class, or choose not to attend at all without consequence
>> to their academic performance. Currently, receiving an A
>> requires a minimum score of 90%, while a D is set at 61%.
>> Under the new scale, a student can obtain an A with a
>> score as low as 80% (typically a B-) and a D with a score
>> as low as 21%, which is otherwise known as an F.
>>
>> Educators, students, and parents have expressed concerns
>> regarding this diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)
>> initiative, particularly how it would impact academic
>> standards and college readiness, Newsweek reported. The
>> San Francisco school district's experiment comes in spite
>> of President Donald Trump's executive order signed in
>> January that eliminated DEI programs in federal
>> taxpayer-funded institutions.
>>
>> Supporters of the policy argue that by reducing the
>> emphasis on behavior-based penalties like missing or late
>> assignments, it more accurately reflects a student's
>> learning, while critics believe it would hurt students who
>> are already on pace for college placement.
> 
> Even their pre-equity grading scale would be considered
> extra easy in the school district I grew up in. :/
> 
> An 80 score on a test (even a ten-question pop quiz) was
> a D. Yeah.
> 
> 95-100 = A
> 88-94 = B
> 81-87 = C
> 75-80 = D
> below 74 = E (a failing grade)
> 
> Tough love in the Olden Days, but at least most students
> geting a diploma could read, write, and do basic math.
> 
> How is San Francisco going to pay for all the unemployment
> benefits for these equititized/non-educated graduates
> 
> I'm glad they're on the opposite coast than I am.
> 
> Nyssa, who thought the grading scale was too tight then, but
> at least it was the same for all of the students in the
> school system who suffered through it
> 

Things were different in my school. Your grades could vary significantly 
by which teacher you had within your school and vary with what kids in 
adjacent schools got.

Within the school, term exams in a subject were usually written by a 
single teacher and it could be a "tough" teacher or a "soft" one; we 
knew by reputation that if the exam was written by Mrs. X it would be 
tougher than if it were written by Mr. Y. Regular tests would be written 
by your own teacher who might be tough or soft.

When you talked to students in other schools, you found their school 
could be very different. For instance, my high school made every English 
exam 100 percent essay questions, no exceptions. However, my friend at a 
nearby school told me that they allowed their English exams to be 25% 
objective (true/false and multiple choice). In my school, only a very 
small handful of students got an English grade higher than 70%; the best 
English mark I ever heard in our school was claimed by the smartest guy 
in the school, he got 78%. In my friend's school, English marks in the 
80s were quite common and I expect there were some 90s.

Consider an entire province run like this. I truly don't know how 
universities decided who was fit for admission. (I'm talking about a 
time when MCATs, LSATs and whatever were virtually unheard of in this 
country.) Someone with an average of 70 from our school might still be 
far better equipped than someone from another school that had 90s.

Then, a provincial government saw the madness in this system and devised 
standardized testing so that everyone in the province wrote the same 
exams so that you could finally make apples to apples comparisons.

Of course it happened after my time so it didn't affect me.

Standardized testing had another interesting consequence. One of my 
oldest friends, who took part in many hiring decisions in his 
engineering firms, told me that there had been a lot of grade inflation 
since our day. He said that a student who got a 70 in our day was now 
getting a 90.

-- 
Rhino