Denver Public Schools is spending millions of dollars in grant funding to promote woke ideology instead of teaching children reading, math or language skills to succeed as adults and be functionally literate.
Test scores for middle school students were already woefully behind before COVID drove scores down even lower among children of color. Only 26% of all students in 2019 were proficient in math, 38% in reading, according to U.S. News and World Report.
Rhyen Staley with Parents Defending Education writes in the Washington Examiner that instead of teaching children the basics, Denver Public Schools diverted a $10 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as part of its “Networks for School Improvement” to implement systemwide anti-racist and equity-focused policies.
Another grant from the Wallace Foundation is being used to implement “Transformative Social Emotional Academic Learning” and “wastes valuable class time to push ideas that focus on redistributing power, racism, and racial justice.”
For example, a district presentation states that the primary driver to “increase the proportion of Black and Latinx students demonstrating competency in math” is to redesign systems and processes that “dismantle racist structures.” The district’s solution is to implement “Grading for Equity,” a program supposedly designed to reduce bias in teaching and grading practices. Equitable grading teaches adherents to be highly critical of traditional educational expectations, such as meeting deadlines, personal discipline, and work ethic. While it is sold as “bias resistant,” it actually promotes a bias away from merit.
Just imagine what that $10 million could have done for that district if it were spent on programs to improve proficiency in math or reading instead.
The desired outcome among the wildly dysfunctional Denver School Board seems to be that our children may be functionally illiterate, but at least they’re angry at the system.
Read the Washington Examiner article here.