prejudice – ThisIsCommonSense.org

San Diego’s school district is weakening its grading system because of “racial disparities.”

Yearly averaging of grades will end. Why? The practice, it is said, has penalized students who do poorly early in the year, presumably unfairly.

Teachers will also be prohibited from taking into account whether homework is submitted on time and how students behave in class. These aspects of performance will instead be incorporated into a “citizen grade.”

Richard Barrera, VP of the school district, says “to be an anti-racist school district, we have to confront practices like this that have gone on for years and years.”

Student behavior has sometimes been called “deportment.” Grading it separately is nothing new. But San Diego’s rationale for doing so is bad. And eliminating a yearly average (or semester average) discourages students from working diligently all year long.

What if, under the hobbled system, grades still exhibit “racial disparities”? The logical conclusion is an end to grades and to merit-based distinctions.

Many reasons for academic disparities among different groups are possible. But let’s say that kids of certain color tend to have lousier home lives than kids of other color, and therefore do worse in school.

If so, disparities in performance cannot be attributed to attempts to objectively assess schoolwork.

And the problems won’t disappear if grades disappear.

Any silver lining?

Well, if you’re a substandard teacher, meaningless grades for students will also make it harder to know when you, the teacher, are doing substandard work.

Though the metal most apt, here, is much baser than “silver.”

Lead seems about right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The political “left” dominates a number of institutions, including, most famously, Hollywood entertainment and up-market journalism. But perhaps even more striking is the heavily “liberal-progressive” bent observed in many academic fields, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, far in excess of the leftist percentage in America at large.

And this certainly deserves an explanation.

Could it be the result of bias and discrimination?

It’s long been fun to listen to academics defend their heavily leftist cut of the higher ed pie using arguments that have nothing to do with bias. Why “fun”? Because similar arguments trotted out in other fields receive nothing but scorn from academics.

Now there’s a study showing that social psychologists, at least, self-admit to an anti-conservative bias in grading papers, awarding grant proposals, inviting symposium speakers, and accepting job applicants. And here’s the kicker: “The more liberal the survey respondents identified as being, the more likely they were to say that they would discriminate.”

Those who are already sharpening their ad hominem retorts should note that the study was not conducted by folks on “the right.” Co-author Yoel Inbar described himself to Inside Higher Ed as “‘a pretty doctrinaire liberal,’ who volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008 and who votes Democrat. His co-author, Joris Lammers of Tilburg, is to Inbar’s left, he said.”

The most interesting aspect of bias uncovered in the study, however, is that interviewed academics estimated that their colleagues were twice as likely as themselves to discriminate on ideological grounds.

The “other guy” is always worse than oneself.

Which is where bias and prejudice begin, perhaps.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.