San Francisco’s ‘Equity’ Grading Would End Education

National Review Online

Thursday, May 29, 2025

 

You can push even parents in San Francisco too far.

 

A proposal to experiment with changing the grading system in the city’s high schools as part of a “Grading for Equity” program quickly crashed and burned — and for good cause.

 

The plan, which would have initially involved 70 teachers across the city’s high schools, was a disaster that would have needlessly harmed students.

 

Homework and classroom participation were no longer going to influence final grades, which were instead going to be primarily determined by a final exam that students could take multiple times.

 

Attendance and punctuality wouldn’t be factors in student grades. A score of 80 percent would be awarded an A, a score as low as 41 would count as a C, and a score of 21 would grant a D.

 

Plans like these fail — and usually, as we saw here, fail quickly. Neighboring school districts have tried similar schemes; Dublin Unified removed zeros given for missing assignments and granted a minimum 50 percent for any “reasonably attempted” assignment. After parental backlash, the district made this grading system optional for teachers rather than mandatory.

 

Instead of educating children, the San Francisco equity plan would have effectively instrumentalized the children the school system is supposed to serve, making them an object lesson for educating the rest of society on what equality should look like. In this upside-down reconception of schooling, instilling knowledge, virtue, and habits for lifelong learning becomes a scandalous distraction from the political project of making students equal.

 

In some ways, we should not be surprised at schemes like this. The progressive overclass guards its privilege to rule through meritocracy on one side, while on the other defends its moral right to rule through its commitment to equality. Some level of cognitive dissonance must be expected.

 

Anyone educating children instantly and unforgettably comes into overwhelming contact with human inequalities. Some children have more aptitude, others more grit, still others have more resources for support. A lucky few have it all, and unfortunates have none of the above. Grading for equity amounts to willful and moralized deception, including self-deception.

 

Trying to change the definition of A work to include B work is just obscuring the achievements of the best students and teachers. Passing work that fails is an even worse thing to do for the middling and poor students and teachers who might otherwise be roused to do better. It obscures the need for more dramatic interventions and remedial learning.

 

The best thing schools can do for children is to raise standards, and then build a culture of support that helps children achieve to the best of their abilities. San Francisco was trying to create a Marxist demonstration out of its schooling, and parents in the famously progressive city wanted nothing to do with it.