I found this on X:
9/11/25 Inside Higher Education:
The U.S. Department of Education plans to end discretionary grant programs for a slew of minority-serving institutions, officials announced Wednesday—after Congress had already appropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars to those programs. The move stunned MSI advocates, who argue the department doesn’t have the authority to nix them.
The Education Department asserted that these programs amount to “discrimination” and are “unconstitutional” because they require colleges to enroll a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background to qualify. For example, HSIs must enroll at least a quarter Hispanic students, among other requirements, to earn the federal designation.
“Discrimination based upon race or ethnicity has no place in the United States,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in the announcement. “To further our commitment to ending discrimination in all forms across federally supported programs, the Department will no longer award Minority-Serving Institution grants that discriminate by restricting eligibility to institutions that meet government-mandated racial quotas.”
When our government started actively supporting HBCUs, it was in the aftermath of slavery. You can argue, I think legitimately, that subsequent efforts, not entirely in the South, sought to keep blacks uneducated and unskilled.
Those days are long over. The legal obstacles have been gone for at least two generations. Hispanics were never subject to these legal obstacles. They were in the eyes of the law white. A friend graduated from University of Texas in 1948. That institution was still requiring blacks to attend an inferior, all-black law school in 1950. While looking through her graduation program, I was struck with how many Spanish names there were.
The only defense progressives have left is that this is still a profoundly racist society. In 1930. Charlotte Democrats would have lynched to accused. The double standard for justice argues that if there remains widespread discrimination, it is in favor of black criminals, largely to the detriment of black victims.
"It goes on to state “the best is to invite just one person” and “…not have that person in competition with others.”"
Essentially an admission that victim group members cannot handle competition with other applicants who are not designated victims.
The medical school was even worse:
"“A snapshot archived on August 27, 2024, shows that: ‘[d]epartments are eligible for up to $50,000 in subsidies for the hiring of faculty from groups that are underrepresented in medicine (URiM),’ with additional funds for hiring two URiM candidates.”"
Imagine if white racists ever became dominant voices in academia (right after the pigs fly over campus) and they adopted an internal policy of disregarding applicants unable to write an adequately white supremacist manifesto.
The only way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating.
The school — which serves mainly low-income Latino and Black students — had piloted a new grading approach in 2019, then embraced it when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted students’ lives and learning. Students could redo assignments repeatedly and turn in work late. Even if they didn’t complete the assignment, the lowest score they could get was 50 rather than zero — a concept known as no-zero grading.
In Chicago and around the country, no-zero grading started to take hold at least a decade before COVID struck — part of a larger push to give students more chances to show what they learned. Its supporters argue that giving students zeros for missed or badly bungled assignments makes it too hard for them to recover, leading some to stop trying — and to stop showing up to class.
But teachers at Richards and at least one other high school in Chicago are pushing back on the controversial approach to grading. They worry it allows some students to eke out passing grades with little effort and undermines the importance of turning in work on time and coming to school regularly.
Some educators and experts think no-zero grading — and a broader push to avoid giving F’s — is one reason why CPS has experienced two seemingly conflicting trends since the pandemic: High absenteeism among high school students and increasing graduation rates.
Last year, a quarter of all high schoolers missed more than a month of school, a Chalkbeat and WBEZ analysis found. But the graduation rate has kept going up.
Principal Kennedy, at Richards, is skeptical that no-zero grading was a key factor in lowering attendance, and remains a firm believer in second and third chances for students. But she could also see where her teachers were coming from last spring.
“When students graduate and are working in jobs, what they experience around grace and flexibility at school is not going to match,” Kennedy said. “This bubble is not going to surround you wherever you go.”...
As part of efforts to help students stay on track at Richards in 2019, Kennedy and a group of her teachers read a 2018 book, “Grading for Equity,” by Joe Feldman, which makes the case for rethinking how schools grade students. Feldman, a Harvard-educated former school district administrator, runs a consultancy that works with districts on implementing equity-based grading. In recent years, Feldman and others had questioned the zero-to-100 grading scale, arguing that it’s slanted toward failure. Feldman’s approach has gained traction — and spurred debate — in recent years.
Feldman argues that traditional grading often does not reflect whether students have learned something or gained skills, and grades based on attendance, along with homework grades, can be unfair to low-income students and students of color, who are more likely to contend with homelessness, responsibilities such as sibling care, and other hurdles....
Student Kayla Saffold loves that Richards has fewer than 400 students and so many teachers like Brahm who work to make the school a welcoming, understanding place. “It is like a family,” she said.
As she wraps up her senior year, she can name a long list of her activities, from basketball to founding the student council.
But Saffold said the no-zero grading system was a disappointment.
“I was a witness to kids just coming in, like, twice a week and doing two assignments and then passing the class,” she said. “It was just crazy to me.”
“It felt like I had to put in the effort to get the A, and someone else ends up barely putting in any effort at all, and ended up passing the class. It felt unfair to me,” she said.
If this was not so transparently racist in intent, it would be laughable. Equity is really "the soft bigotry of low expectations." Assuming that BIPOCs are incapable of performing like white kids is really a leftist admission that they think they are too stupid to compete on an equal basis with whites.
1. I grew up below the poverty line.
2, My parents sacrificed mightily to rent in a city with good schools (largely because parents were engineers, scientists, and college faculty).
3. I experienced discrimination in scholarships.
4. My father spent most of my life running from the FBI. (He played poker with the sheriff. Guess who won and who lost.)
There seems to be at least one federal employee who appears to have thought that. 3/12/25 Daily Mail:
A top 'DEI' activist is caught on voicemail allegedly offering minority air traffic controller candidates the chance to cheat in a make-or-break entry exam.
Shelton Snow, a powerful figure in the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), can be heard promising advance access to test answers in a shocking audio clip obtained by DailyMail.com.
'There are some valuable pieces of information that I have taken a screenshot of and I am going to send that to you via email,' says Snow, an air traffic operations supervisor based out of New York.
'I am about 99.99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each question.'
The inside info was made available in 2014 to African Americans, females, and other minority candidates – but whites were left out of the loop to 'minimize competition'.
Exactly how many applicants were able to capitalize on Snow's brazen offer to secure coveted controller jobs responsible for the safety of millions of fliers remains a mystery.
But one former NBCFAE member, Matthew Douglas, told DailyMail.com: 'I know several people who cheated and I know several people who are controlling planes as we speak.'
Why does Sniow think so badly of black people? Projeection?
"Option No. 1: The state will hire teachers who excel in language arts and math.
"Option No. 2: The state will hire teachers who underachieve in language arts and math.
"If you’re in New Jersey, your political leaders just chose Option No. 2."
The link goes to a missing MSN story. So I looked up the bill on the New Jersey website:
"Notwithstanding P.L.2021, c.420 (C.18A:26-34), or any other law, rule, or regulation to the contrary, the State Board of Education shall not require a candidate seeking any instructional certificate, except in the case of a limited certificate of eligibility or a limited certificate of eligibility with advanced standing established pursuant to P.L. 2021, c. 224 (C.18A:26-2b et seq.), to complete a Commissioner of Education-approved test of basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills including, but not limited to, the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators test, in order to obtain an instructional certificate." [Emphasis added]
Yes, "basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills..." Any guesses why? Like that LA assistant fire chief, poorly performing students probably need teachers just as weak as they are at these subjects, as long as they look like them.
DEI: Didn't Earn It
The University of Kentucky will disband its Office for Institutional Diversity in response to questions from policymakers on whether the school has stifled political discussions, its president said Tuesday.
The action on the Lexington, Kentucky, campus comes after state lawmakers debated whether to limit diversity, equity and inclusion practices at public universities. Republican supermajorities in the Kentucky House and Senate were unable to resolve differences on the issue before ending this year's session in April, but the matter has been expected to resurface when lawmakers reconvene early next year.
In the school's preemptive action, units housed in the shuttered diversity office will be shifted elsewhere on campus, including into a newly created Office for Community Relations, UK President Eli Capilouto announced in a campuswide email. The restructuring won't result in job losses, he said.
Capilouto stressed that the school's core values remain intact — to protect academic freedom and promote a “sense of belonging” for everyone on campus, regardless of background or perspective.
Belonging is fine. It applies to the melanin-challenged as well. I am disappointed that there will be no lost jobs. Every unneeded administrator increases the cost of higher education.
'The Big Tech giant disbanded the DEI team at the beginning of the month due to “changing business needs,” according to a July 1 email obtained by Business Insider.'
