Here on the home front, there's another war going on – this one against our kids' education.
Racial-equity warriors are canceling Advanced Placement courses and eliminating honors programs all across America. In some schools, they're doing away with homework deadlines, attendance requirements and test scores. We're told these changes will make school more inclusive for underperforming black and Latino students.
Dismantling the school meritocracy is insane. It robs students – especially kids from low-income and immigrant households – of their best chance to get ahead.
Parents at LaGuardia HS in Manhattan were notified last week that the school's AP Calculus course doesn't meet College Board standards. Students taking the course to prepare for the AP Calculus exam and apply to college just got sabotaged.
Truth is, LaGuardia's principal, Yeou-Jey Vasconcelos, has been gunning for AP courses since she took the job. Last summer, Vasconcelos told parents that "standardized test scores reflect systemic racism rather than student achievement." Parents knew that was nonsense and thwarted the plan. So AP Calculus apparently got dumbed down instead.
Attacking AP courses and exams is happening everywhere, but it's a nonsensical approach to a serious problem: the huge racial gap in student performance.
We've made progress on ensuring minority students have access to AP courses. Ten times as many black students take AP tests as 20 years ago. But the pass rate is 72% for Asians, 65% for whites but only 44% for Hispanics and a terrible 32% for blacks. Our nation should be deeply concerned, but the answer is to prepare disadvantaged kids in the early grades.
AP courses come near the end of a student's public-school experience. Attacking AP is devastating to students from all backgrounds who are counting on hard work and talent to pave their way into a competitive college.
Sean-Michael Pigeon, now a Yale undergrad, says, "I grew up poor in a single-income household," without opportunities to earn credentials like studying violin, pursuing sports, traveling and working as a summer intern. "I could study, though." He notes, "Testing and academic performance were the best way for someone like me to succeed."
Yet in New York City and nationwide, honors programs and accelerated math for middle schoolers and calculus in high school are on the chopping block. The city Department of Education notified principals, "Recognizing student excellence via honor rolls" is "detrimental" to some students.
Parents at three New York City middle schools have had to battle against eliminating honors math classes. The latest skirmish is at Robert Wagner MS in Manhattan. The DOE contends that all Wagner seventh graders will have an honors-level curriculum in math.
One Wagner parent captured the silliness of that claim: "What happened, suddenly everyone's 'accelerated'?" he snarked. Citywide, only 27% of eighth-graders are proficient in math, based on standardized tests.
Woke educational activists say math tracking – allowing kids to take different courses based on ability – promotes segregation, since, e.g., black students are only half as likely to take calculus as whites.
Activists want to hold back fast learners and mix students of varying abilities to study math together. Sorry, but talented students grow bored and even drop out. A Brookings Institute analysis found scant evidence to support eliminating tracking and noted some schools even "use tracking to serve the cause of equity."
The answer to closing the race gap in school performance is not to scapegoat talented kids. It's to help the disadvantaged overcome the barriers to success. Start with getting their parents engaged. Some parents don't insist their children complete homework, get to school on time and pay attention. They need help buying into those standards.
Sadly, that's not politically correct.
Citing Joe Feldman's "Grading for Equity," the Los Angeles Unified School District and the San Diego Unified School District, the two largest in California, are admonishing teachers not to penalize students for bad behavior, missing homework, sloppy work or cutting class. Grading on those standards, the LA district says, is "rewarding our most privileged students and punishing those who are not."
That foolish advice is the formula for personal failure and national decline. Bureaucrats putting it into practice are hindering the kids they claim to care about.
Parents know their child's best shot at the American dream is succeeding in a competitive public school. They need to take up the fight – before it's too late.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
Twitter: @Betsy_McCaughey