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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I don’t think you understand what I was asking. Doesn’t federal and state law mandate that FCPS address equity or inequality or whatever you want to call it.[/quote]

Equality means equal opportunity, which means that children's access to educational opportunity cannot be based on factors such as race, background, gender, etc.  The 14th Amendment and tons of laws prohibit treating children differently based on these factors.

Equity means achieving equal outcomes.  Equity has become a buzzword and is the subject of many Presidential executive orders, but it isn't really the subject of any laws.  The problem is that not every student has equal ability or give equal effort, so equity can only really be achieved by removing aspects of school that require ability or effort.  Equity would also support spending far more resources on disadvantaged children than on nondisadvantaged children.[/quote]

No.

Equality means everyone is treated exactly the same, regardless of their condition... e.g. no accomodations for the differently-abled. Equality is surface-level "equality of opportunity", but this inch-deep understanding often leads it to just being a facade thereof.

Equity acknowledges that sometimes people need to be treated differently in order to provide meaningful "equality of opportunity". Go ahead and build that wheelchair-accessible ramp. It recognizes that simply spending the same $/pupil (which would be equality) between an area with high FARMS students, fewer extracurricular or community assets, etc. than an area with high-SES families and resources supporting kids both in and out of the school is not going to produce true equality of opportunity between those groups of students.

The Supreme Court has ruled that differing $/pupil doesn't violate the Equal Protection clause (San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez). That case was in support of the system whereby wealthy districts have better-funded schools since so much of it comes from property taxes, while poor districts have far fewer resources with which to educate their students (who are typically starting school "behind" their wealthier counterparts to begin with, so this just compounds and perpetuates the inequality of opportunity). But the same logic applies in reverse, where we can take the more enlightened perspective that we ought to provide students who come from disadvantaged circumstances with additional supports in order to provide more meaningful equality of opportunity.

Neither equality nor equity refers directly to "equality of outcomes", nor do they guarantee them. One might generally assume that if you were meaningfully providing equality of opportunity to two different groups of students (grouped on whatever characteristic you deem of interest, within reason) that their outcomes ought to be roughly similar, and that any vast discrepancy in outcomes is probably a decent indicator that maybe they aren't being provided true equality of opportunity, and therefore would merit investigation as to the root causes and whether they can be remediated. But equity certainly does not demand taking away appropriate opportunities for advanced students to excel ("closing the achievement gap from the top down"), but it does suggest additional supports may be needed for those who are struggling. Equity likewise doesn't demand removing stairs, but it does suggest adding other mobility options such as ramps and elevators might be appropriate.[/quote]

NP.

While you provide evidence to support what equity  is supposed to mean, you are dodging the realities of what is happening in FCPS, in our kids schools, right now, in the name of “equity.”

Closing the racial and economic achievement gap - from the top down.

That is what the FCPS board and Michelle Reid are doing.  Instead of raising up the lowest performing students / schools, the Board and Reid are taking away learning opportunities from top students - which will effectively help close that gap.

In FCPS, that IS “equity” - as the Board and Reid interpret it.

There are too many examples to list!  But a few notable ones include:  watering down AAP with the new “HOPE” rating scale, replacing AAP math with “E3” or E-cubed math to get rid of accelerated math classes, the attempt to purge all higher math from high school through VMPI (which only failed after massive push-back), etc, etc, etc.

Stop pretending equity is something it’s not here in FCPS.

If you are honest about where FCPS is headed, look at school systems who think the same way as Reid and the current board:

“That draft explicitly promoted the San Francisco Unified School District’s policy of banishing Algebra I from middle school—a policy grounded in the belief that teaching the subject only in high school would give all students the same opportunities for future success. The document also made a broad presumption that tweaking the content and timing of the math curriculum, rather than more effective teaching of the existing one, was the best way to fix achievement gaps among demographic groups”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/california-math-framework-algebra/675509/

THAT is “equity” in practice.[/quote]

It seems like your throwing around "equity" like a boogeyman buzzword the same way "woke" was a year ago to support a political agenda.

The HOPE scale appears to be an expansion of GBRS to take a more holistic look at factors that contribute to an academically successful/advanced classroom full of students. Frankly, if anything it appears it's making AAP more homogenous rather than "watering it down", because it appears it could be used to weed out certain kids (e.g. 2E) who are otherwise AAP eligible. That's speculation because we don't have transparency on how the scores will be used/implemented, but if true that's the opposite of equity.

Where has it been indicated that E3 is being implemented to [b]replace[/b] AAP? Be specific.

I am familiar with VMPI and I think your characterization that it is an attempt to "purge all higher math from high school" is at best hyperbolic, at worst disingenuous, but in either case another case of attempting to abuse the term "equity" to support a political agenda when you disagree with a policy. All VMPI is doing is taking the 3-year Algebra/Geometry/Algebra II sequence and integrate that material in a blended 3-year approach instead (which makes sense and I support, it is an overdue update to the approach to teaching the Algebra/Geometry concepts) and which has greater emphasis on reasoning and problem-solving over rote computation (again, fully support... this is why I supplement with AoPS). I do think there was some valid concern and messaging confusion, as some of their initial materials/presentations indicated it would only be available as an 8th-10th sequence forcing everyone to the same timeline, whereas other materials around that same time (spring 2021) included appropriate qualifying language like "typically 8th-10th grade".[/quote]

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