Kids in a classroom. (Photo: Shutterstock/Syda Productions)
San Francisco Schools’ ‘Equity Grading’ Scheme Backfires
The San Francisco children learning about belongingness and sexual ‘health’ can’t read or write at grade level
By Katy Grimes, June 23, 2025 6:27 am
California recently parents discovered that the San Francisco Unified School District had proposed a “grading for equity” initiative, dumbing down all students to the lowest common denominator, the Globe reported.
Rather than lifting struggling students, San Francisco district comrades chose to drag everyone’s kids down, because uneducated, ignorant youth are so much easier to control.
Parental outrage hit peak levels after learning the plan had been deliberately withheld from them. When they learned that the district proposal included allowing students to retake tests multiple times, excluding lateness, effort, and participation from final grades, discarding homework and classwork from grading; and basing 100% of the grade on “summative” testing was “grading for equity” according to a an SFUSD staff report, Superintendent Maria Su announced a “delay” in the implementation of the communistic plan – which really only sought to lower the educational bar for all students.
Lance Izumi, senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute reports that San Francisco’s equity grading scheme has been halted, it “sparked national uproar and derision.”
“The real lesson of this fiasco is the near-total lack of transparency in the school district’s education decision-making process.”
Izumi continues:
Equity grading, which has been adopted by school districts across the country, is basically grade inflation dressed up in social-justice rhetoric.
Under San Francisco’s version of equity grading, homework and most tests, outside of the final exam, would not count toward a student’s final grade. Students would be able to take the final exam multiple times. Further, students could turn in assignments late and not be marked down.
The key problem with equity grading is that it inflates grades but does not increase learning. Making it easier to get high grades disincentivizes students from putting in the effort to learn the subject matter.
In New York City, where equity grading was instituted, high school math teacher Janessa Tamayo said that fewer students did their homework, fewer participated in class, and many stopped taking tests seriously.
For most kids, warned Tamayo, equity grading “encouraged them to do the minimum.”
It is little wonder then that there is no evidence that equity grading improves student performance on standardized tests, despite inflated grades.
As the Globe reported, far too many school districts in California adhere to teaching “the whole child,” which is a truckload of horseshite.
Social and Emotional Learning (“belongingness”)
Sustainable Physical Environment (“every day is earth day”)
Student Nutrition Services (because mommy doesn’t feel like packing you a lunch)
Counseling, Psychological, and Social Services (“31% of high school students report feeling sad”)
Health Education (Sexual education)
Family Engagement (“Community and Family Partnerships. Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is about helping students develop a range of skills they need for school and life’)
The San Francisco children learning about “equity,” belongingness and sexual “health” can’t read or write at grade level. These people aren’t educators, they are indoctrinators.
As Izumi concludes, “The bottom line is that unelected bureaucrats tried to implement a controversial policy without any meaningful input from parents and even school board members. The goal was to hand the public a fait accompli that families in the district would have to accept.
“The San Francisco equity grading implosion is therefore both an academic disaster and, even more importantly, an arrogant insult to the democratic process. Not only should equity grading be discarded permanently, education policymaking in San Francisco and throughout the country must become more transparent if parents are to have real influence over the education of their children.”
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1) Eliminate tenure which will lead to accountability which will lead to the firing of these idealists.
2) Disallow any “educators” from serving on any school board as their allegiance is to the unions.
3) Wait until hell freezes over.
From years of following and speaking up about my own school district I have found that the people who have the power to do something about this awful state of affairs are allergic to doing the right thing, whatever the issue. Not only that but they seem dedicated to doing the exact wrong thing and making things worse with every year that passes. (A lot of it has had to do with catering to children of illegal aliens to keep the ADA count up —- i.e., Average Daily Attendance money from the state —- knowing that without that population the public schools, as they worsen, will bleed students, even more than has already occurred. Budgets haven’t shrunk, by the way, in spite of the hemorrhaging.)
At some point, after somewhat reasonable board members had put the school board behind them, often out of frustration, no concerned solid citizen who was willing to run for a seat could be elected to it. Often such people would be brutally smeared during campaigns. Because so many parents here send their children to private schools the public schools are left to those who don’t care, or who are only interested in sucking cash from it. Garbage humans, if you ask me. The rather large budget is seen by parasitic special interests as a money pot for the taking. The teachers unions rule.
Wish I knew the answer, but having been involved, racking my brains for solutions, trying to find and build coalitions that won’t fall away at the first sign of trouble, I have waited in vain for a sea change in the midst of being vastly outnumbered by greedy idiots. Meanwhile children’s lives are being wasted and meaningful futures for them are being lost. All because of a crushing group of repellent unethical money-hungry adults — teachers, board members, administrators, leftist wack-jobs, and $$vultures$$ from outside the district — whose motives I could never understand and I contend most people cannot understand.
They WANT people who can’t read and write. Those folks are WAAAAY easier to control.
Here in a nutshell is the SFUSD Public School problem. And why it should be shut down.
1) The majority of those who vote in the School Board elections dont have kids and will never have kids in the SFUSD. Which is why so many left wing crazies have been elected in the past. To “social engineer” the students. Most are “activists” who should never be allowed near kids. Only parents should vote in all School Board elections.
2) The last attempt at serious reform of the School District, when Arlene Ackerman was appointed Superintendent , was quickly blocked by the Teachers Union. They quickly filled the Board with their supporters and Ackerman soon left. That was 25 years ago. Even by the very low standards of big city teachers Unions the SF branch is both corrupt and makes sure teachers who commit felonies take many years to fire. You could probably RICO the union
No attempt at reforming the SFUSD has happened since.
3) The majority of employees of the SFUSD have nothing to do with teaching or classroom support. Two thirds of the non-teaching employees could be fired and the SFUSD would still have a much higher teacher / non-teacher employee ratio than any of the private schools in the City. By a wide margin.
4) The majorly of white kids are now in the private system. With the Asians catching up quickly. Over 50% of students in the SFUSD system belong to the 20% of the City population that is Mexican/ Central American or Black. The Mexican/ Central American kids are majority indio. Who have the worst educational record in their home countries. And the majority of black kids live in public housing, most in single mother households, so no surprises how well they do in school.
So as you can guess no amount of money or no amount of “social engineering” is going to change the educational outcome for the majority of SFUSD student. They are not stupid kids, Far from it. But its a home culture problem. In the case of the public housing kids often chaotic and sometimes dangerous. In the case of the public housing kids there is no solution. Single mother kids (not divorced mothers) have terrible education and adult outcomes. And have for generations.
So shut the SFUSD down. There is no fixing it. Much like SF City College. Another huge money pit of corruption and very lucrative incompetence. Give the money to the parents of the students to spend. As vouchers. The private schools in SF are mostly exceptionally good.
So exactly what is new? They’ve been dumbing down for decades. This may be a positive thing in breaking the indoctrination cycle. Children can no longer read the BS……..Ebonics for Language was pushed as a legitimate language from Oakland about 20 years ago, no? My Father after I got out of HS in 72, by 1980 he was in a group trying to push California back to Basic Education, of course they failed, but we’d better start someplace here, we’ve not been raising new Americans for some time.