By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
October 15, 2024
Time and time and time again, “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” and other similar words are being used as excuses to dumb down educational standards.
Here are 24 examples:
1) The New York Times wrote, “The Board of Regents on Monday eliminated a requirement that aspiring teachers in New York State pass a literacy test to become certified after the test proved controversial because black and Hispanic candidates passed it at significantly lower rates than white candidates.”
Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/nyregion/ny-regents-teacher-exams-alst.html?_r=0
Archive: https://archive.ph/GzyQM
2) The New York Times wrote, “A 2009 Princeton study showed Asian-Americans had to score 140 points higher on their SATs than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than blacks to have the same chance of admission to leading universities.”
Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-unfair-advantage-in-admissions.html
Archive: https://archive.ph/MEDXn
3) Patrick Henry High School, San Diego’s largest high school, cited “equity” as its reason for removing some of its classes in advanced English, advanced history, and advanced biology.
4) The Vancouver School Board cited “equity and inclusion” for why it got rid of its honors courses in math and science at its high schools.
Archive: https://archive.ph/MBOEo
5) In the name of equity, California will discourage students who are gifted at math
Original: https://reason.com/2021/05/04/california-math-framework-woke-equity-calculus/
Archive: https://archive.ph/N4CQC
6) PBS Boston affiliate WGBH: “Boston public schools suspends test for advanced learning classes; concerns about program’s racial inequities linger”
7) Lowell High in San Francisco, one of the country’s best public high schools, replaced its merit based admissions with a lottery based admissions, because the school had too many Asians.
Original: https://abc7news.com/sfusd-board-of-education-meeting-school-lowell-high-sf/10325219/
Archive: https://archive.ph/iGzom
8) Expecting math students to get the right answer is now considered to be a form of “white supremacy.” See page 6 at this link:
Original: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf
9) The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City canceled its honor society because whites and Asians were earning better grades than blacks and Latinos.
Archive: https://archive.ph/WNwvW
10) New Jersey stopped requiring new teachers to be proficient in reading, writing, and math, because the requirement was considered to be an “unnecessary barrier.”
Archive: https://archive.ph/vh6io
11) Washington Post: “Maryland school district worker fired after correcting student’s spelling in a tweet”
12) Oregon again says students don’t need to prove mastery of reading, writing or math to graduate, citing harm to students of color
Archive: https://archive.ph/mV38Y
13) In Mississauga, Ontario, a public high school library removed every book that had been published in 2008 or earlier, under the justification of “inclusivity,” “anti-racism,” “equity,” and “diversity”
Original: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/peel-school-board-library-book-weeding-1.6964332
Archive: https://archive.ph/ktv2R
14) The public schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts stopped offering advanced math classes to students in grades 6, 7, and 8, because students of some races had been doing better than students of other races.
15) Met applicants ‘functionally illiterate in English accepted in bid to improve diversity’
Archive: https://archive.ph/t3Pia
16) New York Times: “At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame? Maitland Jones Jr., a respected professor, defended his standards. But students started a petition, and the university dismissed him.”
Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/nyu-organic-chemistry-petition.html
Archive: https://archive.ph/iDG0t
17) New York Times: “Texas Wesleyan Cancels Play After Students Say Use of Slur Is Harmful. The play’s author, who is Black, said he crafted its language to be historically accurate in representing civil rights struggles. But the theater program at the university heeded the call of students.”
Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/us/texas-wesleyan-play-racism.html
Archive: https://archive.ph/uIz1L
18) University bans sonnets as ‘products of white western culture’
Original: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/14/university-bans-sonnets-products-white-western-culture/
Archive: https://archive.ph/RrXCi
19) The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center temporarily placed Professor Julie Overbaugh, an award winning HIV researcher, on administrative leave, after the school found out that she had once dressed up as Michael Jackson for Halloween.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Overbaugh
Archive: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julie_Overbaugh&oldid=1234427714
20) Canadian court declares math test for new teachers ‘unconstitutional’ because of racial disparities in passage rates
Original:
Archive:
21) The English Touring Opera fired 14 of its musicians because they were white.
Archive: https://archive.ph/Rl9Ub
22) Sunrise Park Middle School in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, cited “equitable grading” as the reason why “students no longer will be given an F grade – no matter how bad they did on an assignment or test or if it was turned in late or not at all.”
Archive: https://archive.ph/JkGij
23) The UCLA Anderson School of Management placed lecturer Gordon Klein on involuntary administrative leave because he refused to dumb down his curriculum for black students after the murder of George Floyd.
Archive: https://archive.ph/XCdng
24) Washington Post: “Students hated ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Their teachers tried to dump it. Four progressive teachers in Washington’s Mukilteo School District wanted to protect students from a book they saw as outdated and harmful.”
Archive: https://archive.ph/H6Z6A