Tag: equity

Oregon Suspends High School Graduation Standards To Make ‘Equitable’ Rules For ‘Students Of Color’

Oregon Governor Kate Brown (D) signed a bill last month suspending proficiency requirements for high school graduates for the next five years.

Brown quietly signed into a law a bill suspending her state’s proficiency requirements on July 14. Oregon is expected to go without proficiency standards for high school graduates until new rules are crafted and implemented in 2024. Those new rules will likely not apply to high school graduates until 2027; however, as Oregon education officials are reluctant to change standards for students that have already entered high school, according to The Oregonian.

The governor’s office did not announce her signing of the bill in a signing ceremony nor in a press release. The signed bill did not appear in the legislative database as signed until July 29, an uncommon occurrence for a bill that was signed over two weeks prior. A spokesman for the governor said that suspending proficiency requirements would aid the state’s minority students.

“Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color” stand to benefit from the legislation, Brown’s deputy communications director Charles Boyle told The Oregonian in a statement. “Leaders from those communities have advocated time and again for equitable graduation standards, along with expanded learning opportunities and supports.”

Oregon’s proficiency requirements mandate that all high school graduates demonstrate a roughly 10th grade level competence in reading, writing, and math. Those standards were first suspended last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic as students were taken out of classrooms and school was moved almost entirely online.

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Minnesota fourth-graders are told not to tell their parents about ‘equity survey’ on race and gender OR skip questions (even if they don’t understand them)

A class of fourth graders in Minnesota were given an equity survey about race and gender, but were allegedly told by a teacher not to tell their parents about the questions that they were asked even if they didn’t understand them. 

The survey was conducted at Riverview intermediate school in the Sartell-St. Stephen School District in Minnesota by the Equity Alliance of Minnesota, and comes amid a national debate on how to teach history and current events specifically focusing on matters of race. 

Student Hayley Yasgar addressed a school board on July 19 and told them she felt ‘very nervous and uncomfortable’ when her teacher instructed her not to talk to her mother about the survey. 

She also says she was not permitted to skip any questions even if she didn’t understand them, in a video of the meeting posted by Alpha News.

One question said: ‘Do you currently identify yourself as female, male, transgender (transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from their assigned sex. For example, they were born male but now identify as female), or something else?’ 

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Surgeon General says “equity” is the reason COVID “misinformation” needs to be censored online

In his address on the administration’s concerns about online health “misinformation” surrounding the pandemic, Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said the misinformation concerns were focused on “equity.”

The White House has come under fire for its plans for a direct approach regarding online censorship, especially when it emerged that it was flagging posts on Facebook.

“Misinformation is a threat to our health, and the speed, scale and sophistication with which it is spreading is unprecedented,” Murthy said in the Thursday morning address. “I will not hesitate to say that and to call for greater accountability and action to address health misinformation.”

“A word about equity though,” he continued. “We recognize that equity must be at the center of our work to confront health misinformation. Here’s why: Because unequal access to the health care system, education and technology, means that some people have less access to accurate health information than others. And when those people instead encounter health misinformation, it can worsen their health outcomes, which exacerbates health inequity in what becomes a vicious cycle.”

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Twitter Suspends NY Times’ Columnist’s Account After He Denounces Equity as ‘Racism’

Twitter has suspended the account of a Pultizer Prize-winning New York Times op-ed writer one day after he wrote a column denouncing woke ideology as a form of “racism.”

The New York Times posted Bret Stephens’ latest column, titled “The New Racism Won’t Solve the Old Racism,” on its website on June 28 and published it in the print issue dated June 29.

In the piece, Stephens wrote that the drive to bring about intersectional “equity” — often designated by the term “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) — “is insulting to everyone who still believes we should be judged by the content of our character.”

The idea that the government should redistribute wealth along racial lines has taken on new life since Ibram X. Kendi made it the central pillar of his bestseller, “How to be an Antiracist.”

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Restaurants Are Now Adding ‘Equity’ Charges to Customers’ Checks to Fight Oppression

“Where should we eat tomorrow?” my wife asked me excitedly as we sat on our deck Friday evening.

She had locked down a babysitter for Saturday night, and we were both eager for our first dinner date alone together in months.

“Broders’,” I answered without hesitation.

Located in southwest Minneapolis, Broders Pasta Bar is a local gem. It has a great outdoor patio and the best Italian cuisine in the Twin Cities. We had not eaten there since the pandemic began.

My wife nodded and started to make a reservation on her phone. Then her jaw dropped.

“You’re not going to like this,” she said.

She was right.

On its website, Broders’ has a notice to customers notifying them of a new 15 percent “benefits and equity” charge they’ve instituted. They justify the charge, first, by explaining that “many states have allowed reduced minimum wages for service staff in the form of a tip credit.”

The restaurant’s second justification is that many tippers are racist and sexist, according to uncited research.

“Studies have also shown that there is inequity and built-in bias in the way consumers give tips,” the statement reads. “In general, Black or Brown servers receive less tips than Caucasian servers. There is gender bias as well.”

The final part of the statement says the new policy stems from wider racial injustice and is not a substitute for gratuity.

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New GMU diversity hiring practice encourages selecting for skin color over qualifications

George Mason University sets candidate diversity equivalent with professional achievement

George Mason University is redefining its hiring practices to make candidate diversity equivalent with professional experience.

President Greogory Washington said in a recent email “we need a more comprehensive framework for what constitutes ‘best’” in hiring faculty and staff.

He said in his April 15 email that his explanation came in response to concerns that college hiring must reflect achievement and preferring minorities would be illegal.

“If you have two candidates who are both ‘above the bar’ in terms of requirements for a position, but one adds to your diversity and the other does not, then why couldn’t that candidate be better, even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate,” Washington wrote.

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American Medical Association Rejects “Equality” and “Meritocracy” In Just-Released “Racial Justice” and “Equity” Strategic Plan

While you weren’t watching, the American Medical Association surrendered to Critical Race Theory activism, rejecting “equality” and “meritocracy” as goals of medical education, and insisting the Critical Race Theory be a central part of medical education. While the AMA does not run the health care system, it is hugely influential and the radicalization of the organization is a precursor to pushing discriminatory “equity” programs deeper into medical schools and health care itself.

The American Medical Association on May 11, 2021, released its “first strategic plan dedicated to embedding racial justice and advancing health equity.” The President of the AMA also released a statement supporting the plan.

The AMA press release cites the history leading up to this Strategic Plan:

ORIGINS OF STRATEGIC PLAN

The origins of this strategic plan date back to the AMA’s Annual House of Delegates meeting in June of 2018. In this meeting, the time-limited Health Equity Task Force—appointed by the chair of the AMA Board of Trustees—presented to the AMA House of Delegates Board Report 33, A-18, a “Plan for Continued Progress Toward Health Equity D-180.981 (PDF).”

In April of 2019, the AMA launched the AMA Center for Health Equity with the hiring of its first Chief Health Equity Officer.

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Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian fiction is not a ‘how to’ manual

‘Harrison Bergeron’ has a warning that educators should heed

“Equity” is the latest egalitarian buzzword, so of course it’s being deployed against math programs that challenge high school students to achieve.

“Improve equity in mathematics learning opportunities” is one of the stated goals of the Virginia Mathematics Pathways Initiative. The word is not just included as window dressing.

The Commonwealth is backpedalling furiously at the moment because of criticism from parents and elected officials. The Virginia Department of Education is insisting that it isn’t making significant advances against advanced math classes. However, what we know of the still marinating proposal says otherwise.

The Virginia Mercury reported that the Department of Education’s own “regional webinars” tell another story.

“One widely circulated graphic eliminated courses such as Algebra I and II in favor of ‘foundational’ and ‘essential’ math concepts, with more advanced classes — including calculus and geometry — not starting until the 11th grade,” the Mercury reported.

Moreover, they are considering this flattening of the state curriculum because “Black, Hispanic and low-income students have lower pass rates on state math assessments than White and Asian students,” the Mercury reported.

In other words, in the name of equality, the state is not trying to bring struggling students up so much as hold high achieving ones back a bit.

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