Monday, November 04, 2019


Don't you dare grade on merit, state university tells professors

So what do you grade on?  Skin color? They're not saying.

The manic  desire to show that blacks and whites are equal in educational potential leads here and elsewhere to a destruction of the educational process.  If they have to go as far as they do below, does not that itself show how hard it is to demonstrate educational competence in blacks?

The poor performance of blacks in education is a byword.  Nothing dislodges it.  Nor will this.  All this will do is cover it up



Workshop warns against maintaining 'white language supremacy'

A public university that warned faculty against propping up white supremacy now is hosting workshops to persuade professors not to grade based on merit.

The College Fix reports such workshops are popping up at universities from Washington, D.C. to Idaho.

Boise State University is hosting an event next week called "Inclusive Teaching Means Inclusive Grading, Too."

It's part of the BUILD certificate program, or Boise State Uniting for Inclusion and Leadership in Diversity.

The College Fix said the faculty workshop at Boise State is shrouded in secrecy, but similar events held by different universities shed light on it.

A workshop of the exact same name at University of Tennessee-Knoxville aimed "to engage instructors in conversations and activities designed to foreground diversity and inclusion in considerations of assessment and grading practices."

The University of Michigan held a faculty workshop with a similar name. The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching stated on its website that teachers would "be asked to review their own practices" on grading.

In February at American University, College Fix said, a workshop titled "Grading ain’t just grading" aimed to teach faculty "how to assess writing without judging its quality."

It promised to help teachers rethink "writing assessment ecologies toward antiracist ends."

The workshop warned that "the practices of grading writing" maintained "White language supremacy."

Taxpayer-funded Boise State, the College Fix said, also is hosting as part of its Build Certificate Program a book circle designed to "dig deep into ourselves to explore the ways in which we all, as individuals, sometimes unknowingly, support racism and white supremacy."

SOURCE






Students walk out of Boston charter school over policies they see as racist

Even charter schools cannot erase black/white differences.  Blacks are always going to feel inferior in an educational setting and will tend to blame that on racism etc.

More than 100 students poured out of Boston Collegiate Charter School in Dorchester after lunch Friday to protest policies, practices, and a school culture they consider discriminatory and racist.

The walkout — three weeks in the making — was spurred by growing racial tensions at the 700-student school, organizers said, including the N-word being scrawled in the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms and a student who pulled a hijab off another student’s head.

In a city where black and Latino students overwhelmingly populate charter schools, Boston Collegiate stands apart: White students make up the largest portion of the enrollment — 45 percent — followed by black students at 32 percent, and Latino students at 18 percent. The school serves students in grades 5 through 12 in two campuses.

Very few white faces were among those students who gathered in the upper school’s parking lot along Boston Street as they chanted, “No justice, no peace.”

“This is not just a race issue; it’s a discrimination issue that has been going on too long,” said Arianna Constant-Patton, 17, a junior who helped organized the walkout, as she spoke before the students.

The gathering at times reflected the racial tensions at the school.

Although some students who remained inside the building held up signs supportive of the walkout, other students inside appeared to be laughing at the protesters, agitating them.

“You people laughing in the window, it’s not funny,” one of the organizers, Franchesca Peña, 17, a junior, yelled up to them. “Everyone turn around and look at them.”

Some students voiced frustration that those who supported them inside the building were not outside with them. Others thanked them for their support regardless.

Among the issues that students said they were protesting: discriminatory dress code policies, teacher diversity disparities, and the school’s inaction and lack of progress in response to racist attacks on students and the lack of inclusive culture for students of color.

The students made several demands to improve the racial climate at the school, which included revising the dress code to allow students to wear cultural head wraps, purchasing more textbooks that reflect the students’ diverse backgrounds, hiring more teachers of color, creating more courses that are culturally relevant to students, and forming a “task force that will lead the charge and keep the school accountable for their actions.”

Administrators and teachers were supportive of the walkout and, like the protesters, wore black. Several teachers accompanied the students. Among them was the school’s executive director, Shannah Varón.

“I’m proud of them,” said Varón, who is Latina. “They are on the front line of pushing for the changes they want to see in the world and we want to work with them.”

The school has been taken steps this fall to address the issues students have been raising, Varón said.

Just this week, the school held a community forum on Monday and sent a letter to families Thursday outlining seven action steps. Some of those steps include hiring an equity consultant to do a deep dive on race issues at the school, help staff have conversations with students about race, support student activism, revisit discipline policy, help families build bridges across differences, and increase communications on these issues.

Core values at the school, Varón said, are belonging and the willingness to confront bias in one’s self and others.

But many students said they often feel unwelcome. “Students have expressed multiple times they have felt uncomfortable in a room or in a certain situation,” said Tesean Toole Jr., 16, a junior, referring to such incidents as other students using discriminatory language, including the N word. “But nothing gets done.”

In many ways, the school is a microcosm of the segregation that has defined Boston for decades, some organizers said. “We may be a diverse school, but all the white kids hang out with the white kids, all the black kids hang out with the black kids, and all the Hispanic kids hang out with the Hispanic kids,” said Sarah Purvis, 17, a senior.

“And why is that a problem? It’s a problem because then you don’t learn about all the other cultures around you. There’s no point in having diversity if we don’t have conversations.”

SOURCE





Elizabeth Warren Pledges To Crack Down On School Choice, Despite Sending Her Own Son To Elite Private School

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is pledging to crack down on school choice if elected, despite the fact that she sent her own son to an elite private school, publicly available records show.

The 2020 presidential candidate’s public education plan would ban for-profit charter schools — a proposal first backed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — and eliminate government incentives for opening new non-profit charter schools, even though Warren has praised charter schools in the past.

“To keep our traditional public school systems strong, we must resist efforts to divert public funds out of traditional public schools,” Warren stated in her plan.

Warren has pledged to reduce education options for families, but she chose to send her son Alexander to Kirby Hall, an elite private school near Austin. Tuition for Kirby Hall’s lower and middle schools — kindergarten through eighth grade — is $14,995 for the 2019-2020 school year. A year of high school costs $17,875.

Kirby Hall’s 1987 yearbook lists Alexander Warren among the school’s fifth-graders. Yearbook photos show Kirby Hall’s Alexander Warren is the same Alexander Warren seen in old family photos with his now-famous mother.

Alexander, like most fifth-graders, turned 11 in 1987, public records accessed through the research service LexisNexis show. That coincides with Warren’s final year teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, which is located a short drive from Kirby Hall.

“I do not blame Alex one bit for attending a private school in 5th grade. Good for him,” said Reason Foundation director of school choice Corey DeAngelis, who first flagged Alexander’s private schooling Monday. “This is about Warren exercising school choice for her own kids while fighting hard to prevent other families from having that option.”

It’s unclear whether 1987 was the only year Warren sent any of her children to private school. Warren’s campaign didn’t return emailed questions by press time.

Warren praised charter schools as recently as 2016, when she said charter schools “are producing extraordinary results for our students” in Massachusetts. Warren’s crackdown on elite charter schools would leave elite private schools like Kirby Hall unscathed, while greatly eliminating charter schools as a parallel option for lower-income families.

The senator’s plan to crack down on charter schools drew criticism from both sides of the aisle, including from The Washington Post’s editorial board, which described Warren’s reversal as transparent catering to teacher’s unions.

“The losers in these political calculations are the children whom charters help,” the Post’s editorial stated. “Charters at their best offer options to parents whose children would have been consigned to failing traditional schools. They spur reform in public school systems in such places as the District and Chicago. And high-quality charters lift the achievement of students of color, children from low-income families and English language learners.”

SOURCE




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