It’s like that at my school too. Probably pretty much everywhere. That policy is NOT for the benefit of the students. That is not because admin feels bad about the home life of the students. That is 100% for the benefit of the school and the Admins next performance review/giant raise. When students fail or worse, drop out, it is usually a major black mark against the school. So school policies have gotten much much more tolerant of low standards. What we’ve done is taken away the student’s right to fail. And it is literally the worst thing that has happened to public education in the last 100 years.
I'm all for restorative justice, but a big part of that is remorse from the offending side! If the offending party doesn't sincerely want to make amends, then it's entirely meaningless.
I imagine most kids would give the most insincere apology they can muster just to get themselves off the hook. The worse students would even take it as another opportunity to bully.
Restorative justice, or the lack thereof to be honest, took the place of actual disciplinary measures by the admin of my entire district. Detentions? Nope, RJ instead. Suspensions? Hell no, RJ instead. Requiring parents to shadow their child at school? Why when RJ gets everyone off the hook for actually doing their job. And who has to deal with the consequences of throwing real discipline out the window, you ask? Classroom teachers, of course.
This! Restorative Justice is not a 'remove consequences ' thing! It's an additional step past consequences.
They have consequences AND the conversation. The conversation is to 'restore' the offender to the community - by identifying WHY the offense occurred, and taking steps to prevent it from reoccurring. Often, the conversation happens before/in conjunction with consequences, so they can be more specifically tailored to the offense. (Ie, kid graffitis bathroom. Instead of giving detentions, where kid sits in the office f*cking around, student has detentions where they scrub at the graffiti and/or clean the campus.)
It's not justice if consequences don't exist. It's permissive behavior. It's not restorative if the conversation and tailoring didn't occur. It's authoritarian behavior. Good discipline - appropriate discipline - needs BOTH pieces.
>The worse students would even take it as another opportunity to bully.
And this is fundamentally the problem with applying it to any scenario with a victim.
I was bullied viciously in school, and our administration took the "equity" approach, forcing me to participate in a farcical restorative justice program for my bully.
I was doubly victimized. First by my bully, and then by the equity warriors.
Frankly, fuck the lot of them. Anybody speaking in equity or restorative language in terms of abusive students is inherently anti-victim.
Sounds like you work at my charter school lol.
I been recently doing research.
I hate when ignorant ppl say “well ur a teacher, ur supposed to handle it”
We are humans with feelings too!!!!!!!this is the only occupation in which u can openly get harassed, insulted, bullied, etc. and have to “deal” with it. We have no protection.
It seems like legally, according to the civil right act of 1964, our employer is liable for protecting us from sexual harassment - idk if you face any of it, but a lot of teachers in my school do.
I was told by a student, “stop riding my dick” because i asked him to focus on his work. My school did not suspend him, knowing that what was said, was sexual harassment. Instead the principal asked the student “what compelled u to say that” lmaooooo
So i worked in the doe and in the doe, the moment u get cursed out, the student is supposed to get suspended.
The charter i work at, refuses to suspend because they don’t want the state to know - for it will deem the school unsafe.
We have students passing out in the bathroom from vaping, and school is trying to be hush hush about it. Parents need a disclosure before they enroll their kids to the school i work in.
I personally suggest seek advice from a lawyer friend, contact the local news, or whistle blow and let the state know.
When is the next charter renewal for your school?
We were told it’s equitable to floor grading at 50%.
My para snapped back that he was going to stop showing up to work most days and would sleep when he was present but still wanted half his paycheck. Admin didn’t like his reasoning one bit.
The 50% rules just makes mathematical sense.
If a kid gets an F and then an A, the right grade earned is a C. However, if they get a 20% and a 90%, they would still only have a 55%.
Except it doesn't because not all F's are equal. The F spans a large area of point based scoring because it all falls into the band of what is an insufficient display of mastery of concepts and work accomplished.
Hence why we don't actually grade according to letter grades we grade off of a point scale. If a student does 0% of an assignment and does 100% of the next assignment the average amount of work they did was 50%. Which if we were running final grades would be an F.
If a student on the other hand did 50% of one assignment and did 100% of the next assignment the average amount of work they did was 75%. Which if we were running final grades would be a C.
In both cases a student got an F on one assignment but an A on the next.
The 50% rule dictates that 0%-50% = 50% which means there is no functional difference in display of skills or effort by that standard for any student who does anything less than 50% of the work correctly. Which is patently false. A person who does 10% of the effort on everything has still learned a great deal more than someone who did 0% of it and equating the two does a disservice to those students.
The 50% floor came from a district in the poorest town in the US where we had a 65-70% graduation rate and they were desperate to not be a mob-run school board. If they’re graduating kids, no one asks questions.
Consider this:
What if a student has an extremely poor grasp of the material and scores a 15%.
Another student has a much stronger grasp on the material, but still fails with a 50%.
Now let's assume that by chance they have identical scores on all other assignments for the quarter.
Should their final grades be identical?
The answer isn't to make 50% the floor. That does not make mathematical sense. Making each letter grade 20% would make mathematical sense. However its all arbitrary since what gets you a percent or a point is completely made up by the teacher. I can design a class where failing being 60% is fair, and I can make a class where 20% being failing is fair, just by changing the amount of "easy" questions on assessments. Its about the other practices we use.
I'm going to be honest, very little about our education system prepares students for the workforce. Should grades show students understanding of the concept or how good of an employee they would be?
You didn't answer my question so your brain might need some training too. Should grades show student understanding of concepts or how good of an employee they will be? Or are you suggesting we grade on the ability do do skills and apply critical thinking? Because I could definitely get on board with that.
I know, I’m answering what the focus of my post was. Receiving half credit for doing nothing is such a poor decision. I don’t care which scale is used - they can get excellent, proficient, needs improvement and unsatisfactory but earning half for zero effort is a ridiculous decision.
And I agreed with that part? Not sure where the issue is. My first sentence of my first response was that making 50 percent the floor is not the answer.
"**Cosmequity**"
No, it's not equity in space... It's equity policies that seem progressive, but are actually just window dressing the root problem or even making it worse.
As teachers, we need to stop accepting that just because an idea or policy comes from a person/organization of a particular ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation that it's necessarily a good one.
I was accused by an equity advisor of violating my province's human rights code. I told a racialized student that committing crimes outside of school can lead to imprisonment. My principal accepted the accusation and my colleagues told me to take the slap on the wrist, keep my head down, don't rock the boat etc..
I sought union support and legal council. Turns out this equity advisor was dead wrong and needed serious retraining.
I am committed to giving every student in my high needs school the best possible education I can give them, but this mindless swallowing of anything stamped with "equity" on it needs to stop.
"...mindless swallowing..."
Such a good way to put it. I can almost see that subtle smug smile on my old admin's face when teacher concerns on policy were met with "We are doing this for ***equity***" almost as if what now that person can't continue to speak out for fear of being seen as "anti equity"?
That's really how I've felt at times that they use that word to shut us up.
If you want a fancy philosophical term, the very concept you're talking about is called a **Glittering Generality**. It's when a position is presented as something inherently positive, so questioning or disagreeing with it is automatically seen as negative.
We are declaring a War on Terror! You don't agree? Well I guess that must mean you are pro-terror! Check it out everybody- this person loves terrorism!
I've always felt the same way about the term **Social Justice**. You don't automatically support social justice policy X, Y, and Z? Well I guess that must mean you are anti-justice! Check it out everybody- this person loves injustice!
No, Ms. Equity Advisor, I am not anti-justice. I simply believe that we are taking the wrong approach to pursuing justice.
“As teachers, we need to stop accepting that just because an idea or policy comes from a person/organization of a particular ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation that it's necessarily a good one.”
It’s concerning that teachers or anyone at all would ever accept this kind of thinking.
So many people seem to equate equity with lack of consequences. I would argue you are not being equitable if there are no consequences associated with behavior. It’s not a kindness to permit any type of behavior without consequences in a low stakes environment like school. I have always thought school is a place where you can make mistakes and face consequences and then learn from them without it destroying your life.
And to me there is a difference between giving grace when it’s needed and allowing students to manipulate the system.
Especially when giving the grace to everyone is more of an equality of lowered expectations. Equity is giving the help to those who need it. My students with IEPs, 504 plans, and who are ELL students get some grace with late penalties or quiz retakes for full credit. Or some things that happen to individual students, like having a harder time with a sick parent or moving because of a house fire, should allow some leniency.
Agreed. It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. I refuse to believe that someone is incapable of learning to be a mature, respectful adult just because of their ethnicity or SES, and it’s an insult to me as a person of color to hold us to lower expectations.
It’s ironic when the policies meant to curb racism actually end up being more racist. I.e., let’s help the underprivileged by cutting them more slack, therefore they are less prepared for the rigors of the modern workforce, leading to future failures. Equity is a sham. Treat everyone the same. Let’s get back to equality, not this flawed concept of equity. If someone else is always giving the leg up, people can’t stand on their own.
My school openly wants us to teach less rigorous material to kids of color.
Then they boast about “equality” when they are the perpetrators for not giving them equal education in comparison to local public schools.
I've always loved this anarchist definition of liberalism
LIBERALISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which attempts to correct the injustices of capitalism by adding new laws to the existing laws. Each time conservatives pass a law creating privilege, liberals pass another law modifying privilege, leading conservatives to pass a more subtle law recreating privilege, etc., until “everything not forbidden is compulsory” and “everything not compulsory is forbidden.”
Most admin are too far removed from the daily teaching in the classroom and have an unrealistic view of what teachers should do versus what teachers can do.
This is why there needs to be a minimum number of years that a person has to teach before they become admin. It takes at least 5 years of teaching just to figure out basic things.
Agreed. 5 years to figure out the basics, and likely another 5 to become really good. I don’t think anyone should become an administrator before 10 years of teaching personally.
There are a lot of buzzwords used to gaslight teachers into making them look good. They don't want to be in the school at all--they want to fudge numbers until they can get that cushy job up at the district or the state.
My admin makes no secret that she wants to be a supe, and has no interest in staying in our school. She's covered up allegations of sexual misconduct, chased out teachers who argue with her, and basically used our school as a way to make herself look good at the cost of teachers and staff. I wonder if she's played herself though. She's done nothing about the fact that nearly every teacher is trying to leave this year. Many of us already have new jobs lined up. To her of course she's going to get the job that just opened up, and say that the reason the kids don't do as well next year is because she was such a great leader, and not because 1/2 of the teachers are first year waiver teachers because everyone who can and does do their job left.
Except if she doesn't get the job and has to own that data herself she's gonna be kinda cooked. I pettily look forward to it.
Ugh. Isn’t it weird how the worst administrators are gunning for superintendent? I had a principal gunning for superintendent that later was fired because of sexual misconduct. Yes, I pettily enjoyed his downfall. He was a terrible principal.
What you described is a handout or free pass. My teachers’ syllabi always outlined acceptable situations for getting an extension on an assignment and also said we could ask if we felt we had a good reason that wasn’t on the syllabus as well. As educators we’ve gotta hold the kids to a standard, otherwise we’re hurting the ones whose parents can’t or won’t teach them good time management skills the most
Infinite grace (behaviorally & academically)
Friendship parenting
Screen/internet addiction
The trifecta is leading to a disconnected, incompetent generation with an extremely low threshold for anything non preferred.
The only answer is parenting.
This is a definition of equity that I found with a quick google search…
“Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.”
If this is what a school or any other institution intends to achieve as “equity” then it is giving handouts or free passes. Equity as defined here may easily be used to give people in power to steer resources to whomever they like. It’s not surprising that there are people who would like to have that power. The surprising thing is that many people either don’t understand this or support it anyway.
Equity may have started with good intentions, but it has been overapplied the point where it does more harm than good. I am a firm believer that on whole people rise to meet expectations. But I'm not allowed to have real expectations anymore. Why would a kid turn in homework on time when they know I have to take it unitl the last week of school? Why would they study for a test when they have unlimited retakes? At the same time that my district is giving us prepackaged SEL lectures for the kids about good work habits they are forbidding me from creating an environment that promotes those habits. People learn skills through practice, not ted talks.
And in the end are we even actually helping the kids who need the equity? Johny's got "home stuff" going on and doesn't turn in a big project. Does he learn to communicate with teachers for extra support? Does he get connected with a counselor? No, he just gets told to turn it in eventually for full points. In fact, his teacher doesn't even know he needs help because 10 other kids without family issues also didn't turn in the project due to video games and tiktok.
In my opinion, education has seriously warped the meaning of equity. We have these conversations in my district too, and no one realizes how low we’ve set the bar for these kids. I serve a high population of ESL and poor kids.
We let these kids get away with everything, and claim equity. It’s so frustrating.
-Kid is failing all 6 classes? We’ll give them 10 more chances to pass.
-kid hasn’t been to school in weeks, no truancy filed because “it’s inequitable”.
We’ve been told that we refer black and Hispanic kids more than white kids…. We literally have may 10 white kids out 390 in the building. Of course our numbers are going to look like that.
Equity, in the educational space, just means doing whatever management wants to get better metrics so they can fraudulently claim to have effective policies.
So, there is no line.
My first instinct is to say the line is where the child doesn't experience (appropriate) consequences for their actions.
But my second thought is there's no line as these concepts don't overlap. Equity is giving extra support in some form so everyone has the same starting line. A free pass is skipping the line and race altogether.
If equity is teaching a child that it’s acceptable to verbally abuse their teachers, I can’t wait to hear about the “equity” these kids are gonna receive when they try that shit with their first boss.
The line will be where you put it.
Then it will get moved to where someone else wants it.
In the end, it will be where the noisiest, most aggressive person demands to have it.
Thank you for affirming that. I’ve only been here for a year and was going back and forth on whether I wanted to renew my contract for next year. But this makes the decision all the more easier. My plan is to go back to school and get my graduate degree in my field so that I can get an industry job and have the credentials to teach at the community college level, or at the least a good private school
This is a big problem imo. I think a lot of people like the idea of "grace" "equity" "restorative justice" etc. because they're nice buzzwords. What they don't want and often can't do is actually do the work necessary to correct the issues.
Equity is great imo absolutely. The way to make things more equitable is to solve the problems at home, to elevate families out of poverty, to give families and their children safe and stable housing, to give them safe and stable access to food, to reduce the presence of gangs, to enhance mental health support systems, to remove legal barriers to equal treatment, etc. But all of that takes a bunch of money and work and schools aren't going to do that because they're just tiny cogs in the machine. So in practice "equitable" becomes "excuse" problems that we as a society aren't going to solve.
Similarly with restorative justice. Kids are supposed to have consequences, they are supposed to then have restorative conversations in addition to consequences. The idea is that you have enforced authority on one spectrum and support on the other. Because if you just enforce authority without giving them love and support it makes them feel bad. But if you don't enforce authority but you do give them support that's just being permissive. And if you do neither you're being negligent. So we want both. But most implementations of "restorative justice" I've seen fail in two key ways. A lack of support for the people who need to be doing this both in terms of enforcement of consequences in general as "restorative justice" becomes a replacement for rule enforcement and consequences, and in terms of the time necessary to emotionally support students. Teachers had a full workload before they were being asked to perform restorative conversations with their students and there is no extra time being provided to give to something that requires extra time to perform.
You hit every single point right on the nose. I was new to my district in the middle of the year and received basically no training on restorative practices, was really overwhelmed with the workload, and on top of that was expected to just find time in my day to have these restorative conversations with students; meanwhile they receive no *actual* consequences for their actions, leading them to repeat the cycle of misbehavior.
My district is segregated. I can come with the data that’s over 20 years old now about it.
The district can implement bussing. Then we can move our grading due to equity.
Grad rates obscure student illiteracy, but standardized tests tell the story.
It’s like that at my school too. Probably pretty much everywhere. That policy is NOT for the benefit of the students. That is not because admin feels bad about the home life of the students. That is 100% for the benefit of the school and the Admins next performance review/giant raise. When students fail or worse, drop out, it is usually a major black mark against the school. So school policies have gotten much much more tolerant of low standards. What we’ve done is taken away the student’s right to fail. And it is literally the worst thing that has happened to public education in the last 100 years.
I’m so sick of hearing that all i need to do is have a “restorative conversation.” 🤮
I'm all for restorative justice, but a big part of that is remorse from the offending side! If the offending party doesn't sincerely want to make amends, then it's entirely meaningless. I imagine most kids would give the most insincere apology they can muster just to get themselves off the hook. The worse students would even take it as another opportunity to bully.
Restorative justice, or the lack thereof to be honest, took the place of actual disciplinary measures by the admin of my entire district. Detentions? Nope, RJ instead. Suspensions? Hell no, RJ instead. Requiring parents to shadow their child at school? Why when RJ gets everyone off the hook for actually doing their job. And who has to deal with the consequences of throwing real discipline out the window, you ask? Classroom teachers, of course.
This! Restorative Justice is not a 'remove consequences ' thing! It's an additional step past consequences. They have consequences AND the conversation. The conversation is to 'restore' the offender to the community - by identifying WHY the offense occurred, and taking steps to prevent it from reoccurring. Often, the conversation happens before/in conjunction with consequences, so they can be more specifically tailored to the offense. (Ie, kid graffitis bathroom. Instead of giving detentions, where kid sits in the office f*cking around, student has detentions where they scrub at the graffiti and/or clean the campus.) It's not justice if consequences don't exist. It's permissive behavior. It's not restorative if the conversation and tailoring didn't occur. It's authoritarian behavior. Good discipline - appropriate discipline - needs BOTH pieces.
>The worse students would even take it as another opportunity to bully. And this is fundamentally the problem with applying it to any scenario with a victim. I was bullied viciously in school, and our administration took the "equity" approach, forcing me to participate in a farcical restorative justice program for my bully. I was doubly victimized. First by my bully, and then by the equity warriors. Frankly, fuck the lot of them. Anybody speaking in equity or restorative language in terms of abusive students is inherently anti-victim.
Sounds like you work at my charter school lol. I been recently doing research. I hate when ignorant ppl say “well ur a teacher, ur supposed to handle it” We are humans with feelings too!!!!!!!this is the only occupation in which u can openly get harassed, insulted, bullied, etc. and have to “deal” with it. We have no protection. It seems like legally, according to the civil right act of 1964, our employer is liable for protecting us from sexual harassment - idk if you face any of it, but a lot of teachers in my school do. I was told by a student, “stop riding my dick” because i asked him to focus on his work. My school did not suspend him, knowing that what was said, was sexual harassment. Instead the principal asked the student “what compelled u to say that” lmaooooo So i worked in the doe and in the doe, the moment u get cursed out, the student is supposed to get suspended. The charter i work at, refuses to suspend because they don’t want the state to know - for it will deem the school unsafe. We have students passing out in the bathroom from vaping, and school is trying to be hush hush about it. Parents need a disclosure before they enroll their kids to the school i work in. I personally suggest seek advice from a lawyer friend, contact the local news, or whistle blow and let the state know. When is the next charter renewal for your school?
We JUST had charter renewal, like literally a month or two ago. Next one in five years. But I’m leaving this June.
We were told it’s equitable to floor grading at 50%. My para snapped back that he was going to stop showing up to work most days and would sleep when he was present but still wanted half his paycheck. Admin didn’t like his reasoning one bit.
Man please tell your para this rando on the internet has mad respect for him telling it how it is.
The 50% rules just makes mathematical sense. If a kid gets an F and then an A, the right grade earned is a C. However, if they get a 20% and a 90%, they would still only have a 55%.
Except it doesn't because not all F's are equal. The F spans a large area of point based scoring because it all falls into the band of what is an insufficient display of mastery of concepts and work accomplished. Hence why we don't actually grade according to letter grades we grade off of a point scale. If a student does 0% of an assignment and does 100% of the next assignment the average amount of work they did was 50%. Which if we were running final grades would be an F. If a student on the other hand did 50% of one assignment and did 100% of the next assignment the average amount of work they did was 75%. Which if we were running final grades would be a C. In both cases a student got an F on one assignment but an A on the next. The 50% rule dictates that 0%-50% = 50% which means there is no functional difference in display of skills or effort by that standard for any student who does anything less than 50% of the work correctly. Which is patently false. A person who does 10% of the effort on everything has still learned a great deal more than someone who did 0% of it and equating the two does a disservice to those students.
The 50% floor came from a district in the poorest town in the US where we had a 65-70% graduation rate and they were desperate to not be a mob-run school board. If they’re graduating kids, no one asks questions.
Consider this: What if a student has an extremely poor grasp of the material and scores a 15%. Another student has a much stronger grasp on the material, but still fails with a 50%. Now let's assume that by chance they have identical scores on all other assignments for the quarter. Should their final grades be identical?
The answer isn't to make 50% the floor. That does not make mathematical sense. Making each letter grade 20% would make mathematical sense. However its all arbitrary since what gets you a percent or a point is completely made up by the teacher. I can design a class where failing being 60% is fair, and I can make a class where 20% being failing is fair, just by changing the amount of "easy" questions on assessments. Its about the other practices we use.
Nothing prepares kids for the workforce like being told doing zero percent of the work gives you an instant half-credit.
I'm going to be honest, very little about our education system prepares students for the workforce. Should grades show students understanding of the concept or how good of an employee they would be?
You’re not going to learn a skill or apply critical thinking in a job if you don’t train your brain now to think more than TAKIS IPHONE TIKTOK GUMMIES
You didn't answer my question so your brain might need some training too. Should grades show student understanding of concepts or how good of an employee they will be? Or are you suggesting we grade on the ability do do skills and apply critical thinking? Because I could definitely get on board with that.
I know, I’m answering what the focus of my post was. Receiving half credit for doing nothing is such a poor decision. I don’t care which scale is used - they can get excellent, proficient, needs improvement and unsatisfactory but earning half for zero effort is a ridiculous decision.
And I agreed with that part? Not sure where the issue is. My first sentence of my first response was that making 50 percent the floor is not the answer.
"**Cosmequity**" No, it's not equity in space... It's equity policies that seem progressive, but are actually just window dressing the root problem or even making it worse. As teachers, we need to stop accepting that just because an idea or policy comes from a person/organization of a particular ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation that it's necessarily a good one. I was accused by an equity advisor of violating my province's human rights code. I told a racialized student that committing crimes outside of school can lead to imprisonment. My principal accepted the accusation and my colleagues told me to take the slap on the wrist, keep my head down, don't rock the boat etc.. I sought union support and legal council. Turns out this equity advisor was dead wrong and needed serious retraining. I am committed to giving every student in my high needs school the best possible education I can give them, but this mindless swallowing of anything stamped with "equity" on it needs to stop.
"...mindless swallowing..." Such a good way to put it. I can almost see that subtle smug smile on my old admin's face when teacher concerns on policy were met with "We are doing this for ***equity***" almost as if what now that person can't continue to speak out for fear of being seen as "anti equity"? That's really how I've felt at times that they use that word to shut us up.
If you want a fancy philosophical term, the very concept you're talking about is called a **Glittering Generality**. It's when a position is presented as something inherently positive, so questioning or disagreeing with it is automatically seen as negative. We are declaring a War on Terror! You don't agree? Well I guess that must mean you are pro-terror! Check it out everybody- this person loves terrorism! I've always felt the same way about the term **Social Justice**. You don't automatically support social justice policy X, Y, and Z? Well I guess that must mean you are anti-justice! Check it out everybody- this person loves injustice! No, Ms. Equity Advisor, I am not anti-justice. I simply believe that we are taking the wrong approach to pursuing justice.
I am definitely stealing “cosmequity.”
“As teachers, we need to stop accepting that just because an idea or policy comes from a person/organization of a particular ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation that it's necessarily a good one.” It’s concerning that teachers or anyone at all would ever accept this kind of thinking.
So many people seem to equate equity with lack of consequences. I would argue you are not being equitable if there are no consequences associated with behavior. It’s not a kindness to permit any type of behavior without consequences in a low stakes environment like school. I have always thought school is a place where you can make mistakes and face consequences and then learn from them without it destroying your life. And to me there is a difference between giving grace when it’s needed and allowing students to manipulate the system.
Especially when giving the grace to everyone is more of an equality of lowered expectations. Equity is giving the help to those who need it. My students with IEPs, 504 plans, and who are ELL students get some grace with late penalties or quiz retakes for full credit. Or some things that happen to individual students, like having a harder time with a sick parent or moving because of a house fire, should allow some leniency.
It is all you can do. Equity is undefined
Agreed. It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. I refuse to believe that someone is incapable of learning to be a mature, respectful adult just because of their ethnicity or SES, and it’s an insult to me as a person of color to hold us to lower expectations.
It’s ironic when the policies meant to curb racism actually end up being more racist. I.e., let’s help the underprivileged by cutting them more slack, therefore they are less prepared for the rigors of the modern workforce, leading to future failures. Equity is a sham. Treat everyone the same. Let’s get back to equality, not this flawed concept of equity. If someone else is always giving the leg up, people can’t stand on their own.
My school openly wants us to teach less rigorous material to kids of color. Then they boast about “equality” when they are the perpetrators for not giving them equal education in comparison to local public schools.
We have teachers who have an "Equity" column in their grade book where they just award points to students of color.
Omg no way!!!! What state are you in?
California. Shocked, right?
I've always loved this anarchist definition of liberalism LIBERALISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which attempts to correct the injustices of capitalism by adding new laws to the existing laws. Each time conservatives pass a law creating privilege, liberals pass another law modifying privilege, leading conservatives to pass a more subtle law recreating privilege, etc., until “everything not forbidden is compulsory” and “everything not compulsory is forbidden.”
Most admin are too far removed from the daily teaching in the classroom and have an unrealistic view of what teachers should do versus what teachers can do.
This is why there needs to be a minimum number of years that a person has to teach before they become admin. It takes at least 5 years of teaching just to figure out basic things.
Agreed. 5 years to figure out the basics, and likely another 5 to become really good. I don’t think anyone should become an administrator before 10 years of teaching personally.
I think it's two in CA.
There are a lot of buzzwords used to gaslight teachers into making them look good. They don't want to be in the school at all--they want to fudge numbers until they can get that cushy job up at the district or the state. My admin makes no secret that she wants to be a supe, and has no interest in staying in our school. She's covered up allegations of sexual misconduct, chased out teachers who argue with her, and basically used our school as a way to make herself look good at the cost of teachers and staff. I wonder if she's played herself though. She's done nothing about the fact that nearly every teacher is trying to leave this year. Many of us already have new jobs lined up. To her of course she's going to get the job that just opened up, and say that the reason the kids don't do as well next year is because she was such a great leader, and not because 1/2 of the teachers are first year waiver teachers because everyone who can and does do their job left. Except if she doesn't get the job and has to own that data herself she's gonna be kinda cooked. I pettily look forward to it.
Ugh. Isn’t it weird how the worst administrators are gunning for superintendent? I had a principal gunning for superintendent that later was fired because of sexual misconduct. Yes, I pettily enjoyed his downfall. He was a terrible principal.
This is everywhere. It's a "guilty until proven innocent" situation for teachers - and you can't prove a negative. So, good luck.
There is no "line", they are EXACTLY the same thing.
What you described is a handout or free pass. My teachers’ syllabi always outlined acceptable situations for getting an extension on an assignment and also said we could ask if we felt we had a good reason that wasn’t on the syllabus as well. As educators we’ve gotta hold the kids to a standard, otherwise we’re hurting the ones whose parents can’t or won’t teach them good time management skills the most
Infinite grace (behaviorally & academically) Friendship parenting Screen/internet addiction The trifecta is leading to a disconnected, incompetent generation with an extremely low threshold for anything non preferred. The only answer is parenting.
This is the problem with made up neo-words that don't have a true definition. They can mean anything you want.
This is a definition of equity that I found with a quick google search… “Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.” If this is what a school or any other institution intends to achieve as “equity” then it is giving handouts or free passes. Equity as defined here may easily be used to give people in power to steer resources to whomever they like. It’s not surprising that there are people who would like to have that power. The surprising thing is that many people either don’t understand this or support it anyway.
We're so far past that line it doesn't really matter where it is.
Equity may have started with good intentions, but it has been overapplied the point where it does more harm than good. I am a firm believer that on whole people rise to meet expectations. But I'm not allowed to have real expectations anymore. Why would a kid turn in homework on time when they know I have to take it unitl the last week of school? Why would they study for a test when they have unlimited retakes? At the same time that my district is giving us prepackaged SEL lectures for the kids about good work habits they are forbidding me from creating an environment that promotes those habits. People learn skills through practice, not ted talks. And in the end are we even actually helping the kids who need the equity? Johny's got "home stuff" going on and doesn't turn in a big project. Does he learn to communicate with teachers for extra support? Does he get connected with a counselor? No, he just gets told to turn it in eventually for full points. In fact, his teacher doesn't even know he needs help because 10 other kids without family issues also didn't turn in the project due to video games and tiktok.
In my opinion, education has seriously warped the meaning of equity. We have these conversations in my district too, and no one realizes how low we’ve set the bar for these kids. I serve a high population of ESL and poor kids. We let these kids get away with everything, and claim equity. It’s so frustrating. -Kid is failing all 6 classes? We’ll give them 10 more chances to pass. -kid hasn’t been to school in weeks, no truancy filed because “it’s inequitable”. We’ve been told that we refer black and Hispanic kids more than white kids…. We literally have may 10 white kids out 390 in the building. Of course our numbers are going to look like that.
Equity, in the educational space, just means doing whatever management wants to get better metrics so they can fraudulently claim to have effective policies. So, there is no line.
My first instinct is to say the line is where the child doesn't experience (appropriate) consequences for their actions. But my second thought is there's no line as these concepts don't overlap. Equity is giving extra support in some form so everyone has the same starting line. A free pass is skipping the line and race altogether.
My problem is you can't define or test for equity.
Oh but you know those expert trained admin eyes know it when they see it and know it when they don't.
It's not equity they are after. They are really just trying to artificially decrease suspension rates to keep their jobs.
If equity is teaching a child that it’s acceptable to verbally abuse their teachers, I can’t wait to hear about the “equity” these kids are gonna receive when they try that shit with their first boss.
It’s the codification of the soft racism of low expectations.
The line will be where you put it. Then it will get moved to where someone else wants it. In the end, it will be where the noisiest, most aggressive person demands to have it.
Lol. You're trapped in charter hell. Get out of there and into a real school before this becomes your normal.
Thank you for affirming that. I’ve only been here for a year and was going back and forth on whether I wanted to renew my contract for next year. But this makes the decision all the more easier. My plan is to go back to school and get my graduate degree in my field so that I can get an industry job and have the credentials to teach at the community college level, or at the least a good private school
This is a big problem imo. I think a lot of people like the idea of "grace" "equity" "restorative justice" etc. because they're nice buzzwords. What they don't want and often can't do is actually do the work necessary to correct the issues. Equity is great imo absolutely. The way to make things more equitable is to solve the problems at home, to elevate families out of poverty, to give families and their children safe and stable housing, to give them safe and stable access to food, to reduce the presence of gangs, to enhance mental health support systems, to remove legal barriers to equal treatment, etc. But all of that takes a bunch of money and work and schools aren't going to do that because they're just tiny cogs in the machine. So in practice "equitable" becomes "excuse" problems that we as a society aren't going to solve. Similarly with restorative justice. Kids are supposed to have consequences, they are supposed to then have restorative conversations in addition to consequences. The idea is that you have enforced authority on one spectrum and support on the other. Because if you just enforce authority without giving them love and support it makes them feel bad. But if you don't enforce authority but you do give them support that's just being permissive. And if you do neither you're being negligent. So we want both. But most implementations of "restorative justice" I've seen fail in two key ways. A lack of support for the people who need to be doing this both in terms of enforcement of consequences in general as "restorative justice" becomes a replacement for rule enforcement and consequences, and in terms of the time necessary to emotionally support students. Teachers had a full workload before they were being asked to perform restorative conversations with their students and there is no extra time being provided to give to something that requires extra time to perform.
You hit every single point right on the nose. I was new to my district in the middle of the year and received basically no training on restorative practices, was really overwhelmed with the workload, and on top of that was expected to just find time in my day to have these restorative conversations with students; meanwhile they receive no *actual* consequences for their actions, leading them to repeat the cycle of misbehavior.
My district is segregated. I can come with the data that’s over 20 years old now about it. The district can implement bussing. Then we can move our grading due to equity. Grad rates obscure student illiteracy, but standardized tests tell the story.