Black Education Tragedy & Fraudulent Diplomas (op-ed)

 

Walter E. Williams, professor, economist, author, and syndicated columnist, died at the beginning of the month.  He was 84-years-old.   His last column was called: Black Education Tragedy is New.  Williams listed the following BET episodes.

1). Several years ago, Project Baltimore investigated Baltimore’s school system and their findings were tragic.  In 19 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, out of 3,804 students only 14 of them, or less than 1%, were proficient in math.  In 5 Baltimore high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math or reading.  Despite these deficiencies 70% of the students graduate.  But they receive, what Williams called, a fraudulent diploma.

2). Detroit Public Schools Community District scored the lowest in the nation compared to 26 other urban districts for reading and mathematics at the fourth and eighth grade levels.

3).  A recent video captured some of the miseducation in Milwaukee high schools.  In two city schools, only one student tested proficient in math and none are proficient in English.  However, the school spent a full week learning about “systemic racism” and “Black Lives Matter” activism.

Williams asked: Should we blame this education tragedy on racial discrimination or the legacy of slavery?

Williams answered the question by pointing out academic excellence that took place in black schools during the late 1800’s and early1900’s, an era when blacks were poorer and faced overt racial discrimination.  Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School produced distinguished alumni, such as Thurgood Marshall and Cab Calloway, several judges, congressmen, and civil rights leaders.  Paul Laurence Dunbar High School was a black public school in Washington DC.  It was founded in 1870.  By 1899 Dunbar’s students scored higher on citywide tests than any of the city’s white schools, and the majority of Dunbar graduates went off to college.

Williams emphasized, “Today’s Paul Laurence Dunbar and Fredrick Douglass High Schools have material resources that would have been unimaginable to their predecessors.  However, having those resources have meant absolutely nothing in terms of academic achievement.”

According to Williams, BET is a new phenomenon in black America, and it wouldn’t have been tolerated a century ago.   

Here’s the latest episode of BET.

The San Diego Unified School District decided to overhaul its grading practices because of disparities between white and minority students.  The San Diego Union-Tribune reported, “Black, Hispanic, Native American and Pacific Islanders students are significantly more likely to be given D and F grades.  Black students received D or F grades 20 percent of the time and Hispanic students received them 23 percent of the time, while white students received them 7 percent of the time and Asian students received them 6 percent of the time, according to data from the first semester of the last school year.”

The new grading system will pass students who show progress toward “mastery of standards” rather than rewarding students for completing a certain quantity of work in a timely manner, and, more importantly, the new grading system will not punish students for non-academic factors.   Therefore, late assignments, poor attendance, and bad classroom behavior won’t affect their grades. (Apparently, bad behavior doesn’t contribute to poor grades.  It’s the punishment of the behavior that contributes to the poor grade, which creates the disparity, so the experts say.)

San Diego Unified School District Vice President explained, “This is a part of our honest reckoning as a school district.  If we’re actually going to be an anti-racist school district, we have to confront practices like this that have gone on for years and years.”

There are two concepts of anti-racism the San Diego Unified School District accepted as fact and are the reasons for the grading overhaul.

1). Racial disparities are the result of racist policy

2). Racial groups are equal and none needs developing

Both premises are oversimplifications. 

This effort will disappear the school district’s D and F disparity rates between white students and minority students, but if the “mastery of standards” grading system is substandard then there’s going to be a disparity between earned diplomas by white students and fraudulent diplomas given to the minority students.

San Diego Unified School District’s anti-racist grading system is more recognizable by another phrase: The Bigotry of Low Expectation.

First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 12/30/2020