Ever get that feeling that common sense just packed its bags, left a rather sarcastic note on the fridge, and headed for a less ‘enlightened’ planet? It’s like we’re living in a movie where the scriptwriters decided to see just how much absurdity an audience can take before they start throwing popcorn at the screen. You try to keep up, you really do, but every day seems to bring a fresh new head-scratcher.

And it’s not just the little things, mind you. This creeping departure from reality seems to be infecting some of our most critical institutions. The places that are supposed to be about bedrock principles – like, say, learning things and being rewarded for effort – are suddenly transforming into social laboratories for ideas that would make your grandpa spill his coffee. You’d think education, of all things, would be immune, but oh, you’d be wrong.

Just when you thought the Left Coast couldn’t get any loopier, San Francisco’s public school system has decided to boldly go where common sense fears to tread. Their latest masterstroke? A “Grading for Equity” plan that sounds less like education and more like a deliberate attempt to ensure nobody feels the discomfort of, well, not knowing things. According to a May 28th report from The Daily Caller, this new system is set to redefine what “making the grade” actually means for over 10,000 high school students.

And how, you ask, are they achieving this grand vision of “equity”? By simply lowering the bar until it’s practically subterranean.

From ‘The Daily Caller’:

“The new grading system will award scores as low as a 41 on a 100-point test with a C grade, according to the Voice of San Francisco. Students with a score as low as 21 out of 100 will pass exams with a D grade, according to the Washington Free Beacon.”

Yes, you read that right. A cool 21 percent. Forget striving for excellence; apparently, just showing up and vaguely attempting something is now grounds for a passing grade. One shudders to think what a 10 percent might get you – perhaps a gold star for effort?

So, Participation Trophies Are Now Official Policy?

It gets better, or worse, depending on your tolerance for institutionalized foolishness. This “Grading for Equity” initiative reportedly also means that homework will be eliminated from final grades. You know, that old-fashioned practice of reinforcing learning outside the classroom? Gone. The Daily Caller, citing The Voice of San Francisco, notes that the toll of weekly tests on a student’s grade will also be diminished. Instead, the entire semester’s grade can hinge on a final exam that, get this, can be retaken multiple times. An 80 on a test, by the way, is now an A. So much for the A-students who actually earned their 90s and above. It’s not about equal opportunity anymore; it’s about forcibly engineering equal outcomes, even if it means making everyone equally unprepared for the real world.

Who Needs Approval When You’re ‘Woke’?

You might be wondering who cooked up this brilliant scheme and how it sailed through the approval process. Well, San Francisco Superintendent of Schools, Maria Su, unveiled this plan apparently without seeking approval from the San Francisco Board of Education. The Daily Caller, referencing The Voice of San Francisco, reports it was dropped on them like a bombshell on the last slide of a 25-page PowerPoint during a board meeting.

Her staffers, according to the Free Beacon (as cited by the Daily Caller), claim they have no authority to reject the plan. So, a sweeping change to academic standards, implemented by fiat. This all comes, by the way, as the San Francisco Unified School District faces a $110 million budget reduction. Perhaps this is their version of fiscal responsibility: if everyone passes, you don’t need to fund remedial programs?

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Redefine Success (and Ignore Parents)

Naturally, parents and students don’t get a say in whether they’re subjected to this experiment, even if teachers get some choice in implementation. The Voice of San Francisco (via The Daily Caller) highlights concerns about the very real negative impacts on class rankings, crucial for scholarship access, and the destruction of daily study habits. Why bother with consistent effort when you can just cram for a retakable final?

This isn’t some novel idea, either. Newsweek, cited in the Daily Caller piece, points to a similar grading fiasco in California’s Dublin school district in 2023, where “reasonably attempted” work automatically got a 50% grade. That brilliant policy was, unsurprisingly, suspended. But hey, why learn from past Democrat-led failures when you can just repeat them on a grander scale, ensuring our children are thoroughly unequipped for college or careers?

It’s a sad state of affairs when “equity” becomes a byword for lowering standards so drastically that achievement itself becomes meaningless. This isn’t helping disadvantaged students; it’s disadvantaging everyone by devaluing hard work, knowledge, and genuine competence. It’s one thing to offer support and resources, but it’s quite another to fundamentally rig the system so that failure is almost impossible and success is handed out like candy. Our kids, and our nation, deserve far better than this race to the bottom disguised as progress.

Key Takeaways:

• San Francisco’s “equity grading” means students pass with scores as low as 21%, gutting academic standards.
• Bureaucrats unilaterally impose policies that devalue hard work, replacing merit with mandated mediocrity.
• This dangerous trend threatens students’ futures, echoing failed progressive experiments that harm, not help.

Sources: Daily Caller