West Cook News

Color Us United, a nonpartisan nonprofit aimed at eliminating discriminatory race-based policies in businesses and academic institutions, responded to Oak Park and River Forest (OPRF) High School administrators announcing they will require teachers in the upcoming 2022-2023 school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students. School board members discussed the plan at a meeting on May 26.

Color Us United President Kenny Xu said the standards are failing students. 

“Lowering standards to mask failures to educate populations that you deem ‘underprivileged’ is not an effective solution to solving these problems—in fact, it makes those problems worse,” Xu said in a statement. “To cultivate a culture of excellence you must hold high standards for all, not lower them for groups you deem victimized.”

School board members discussed the plan called “Transformative Education Professional Development and Grading” at the school board meeting presented by Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Laurie Fiorenza, West Cook News reported.

OPRF will order its teachers to exclude variables that “disproportionately hurt the grades of black students.” These variables include truancy, misconduct and failing to complete assigned work, according to the plan.

“Traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap,” the slide deck for the presentation stated.

The plan said that the order promises to “consistently integrate equitable assessment and grading practices into all academic and elective courses.”

Thirty-eight percent of OPRF sophomore students taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test, known as the SAT, failed. The OPRF failure rate was 77% for black students, 49% for Hispanics, 27% for Asians and 25% for whites, according to Illinois Report Card.

OPRF is not alone. In March, the Associated Press reported that school districts across the U.S. are adopting similar plans. Some schools are testing the waters by slowly removing the zero-to-100 point scales, allowing students to have several attempts on their exams and submitting their work late.