Reminder that most "equity" initiatives help rich kids

The more time I spend in education, the more it becomes obvious that most things done for "equity" end up helping rich kids. A smattering of examples that pop to mind as I write this: Removing tracking. Where I live you have the rich districts where 80% of kids are at or above grade level and the poor districts where 25% are. So they remove tracking and teach to the middle. The middle in the poor districts is a couple standard deviations below the middle in the rich districts, so if you're in a poor district, you get the poor kid education with no chance at advanced content, where the rich kids get the rich kid education. Winner: rich kids. SAT: The SAT recently added the desmos calculator. AI says the #1 reason it was added was "equity and access" because you don't have to buy a fancy graphing calculator anymore. However, the desmos calculator comes with all sorts of bells and whistles that can be used to game the system and get a high score without knowing too much math, so high income parents are explosively investing in SAT tutoring that teaches them how to use the calculator to game the test. Winner: rich kids. Special ed. The accommodations get you higher scores, and are pretty easy to get if you know the right doctor. So now we have rich districts with 25% of kids getting extra time on assessments, and the higher scores that go with it. Winner: rich kids (note: this is particularly helpful on the new SAT, where extra time can easily add 100 points to your score). Minimum grade of 50 and no penalty for lack of attendance. Again, this is sold as an equity initiative because certain kids have troubles in their lives that prevent them from attending. Prior to these policies being put in place, schools would make kids try again, for the very basic reason that the goal was learning and they didn't learn. Now, schools operate under the philosophy that learning is optional and everyone should graduate anyway, and this means that low income, low performing kids are attending less and doing less work, graduating with less knowledge than ever before. There's also a secondary effect when you tie this together with #1, where the lack of tracking combined with automatic promotion means that the highest performing poor kids get stuck in a class with kids who are only present half the time and are many years below grade level, so they can't learn either. Winner: rich kids. Every time you add in some sort of policy intended to level the playing field by creating exceptions to standards, the wealthy kids will find a way to manipulate it in their favor. The only way to truly give poor kids a chance is to remove most of these loopholes and just make everyone play it straight. No calculators on the SAT, extreme limits on extra time, bring back tracking and attendance penalties. We're doing it all backwards. submitted by /u/Pale-Carpenter2045 [link] [comments]