As standardized student test scores plunge, some school districts are responding by masking student knowledge deficiencies through equity grading, which is little more than grade inflation dressed up in woke clothing.

There is little doubt that student learning across the country is at a dire level. On the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 69% of students taking the eighth-grade reading test failed to achieve at the proficient level, while 73% of eighth graders failed to score at the proficient mark on the math exam.

As their students are failing, school districts in California, New York, and other states are implementing equity grading, which eliminates penalties for late assignments, allows students to retake exams, and removes misbehavior as a grading factor.

Further, “zeroes” for failing to turn in homework and not taking tests are banned and, instead, students are given 50% scores.

Proponents of these changes justify them in the name of equity, which emphasizes the same outcomes for all students, regardless of merit-based factors such as punctuality and effort.

Education consultant and former teacher Joe Feldman, a top equity-grading advocate, claims, “Many traditional grading policies that seem innocuous on the surface can reinforce existing disparities, rewarding students who already have more resources and punishing students who come to the classroom with fewer resources.”

Feldman points to a California school district that implemented equity grading and saw the number of D and F grades fall by almost a third.

However, that result is not evidence of increased student achievement. The reason that fewer low grades are given under equity-grading practices is because of simple grade inflation, not because students are learning more and performing better.

Even more troubling than equity grading’s mechanical inflation of grades is its misreading of student psychology.

When Janessa Tamayo, a New York City high school math teacher, switched to equity grading practices, fewer students did their homework. Also, fewer students participated in class, and many stopped taking tests seriously.

She said: “Grading for equity works fine for the small percentage of kids who are highly motivated. For the rest, it encouraged them to do the minimum.”

Students themselves are often frustrated by equity-grading practices.

One California student said that teachers in his high school “offer retakes on tests, to the point where you could just flunk a first test and you don’t have to study and then you could keep retaking it, and it’s all in the name of equity.”

Ill-prepared students who are not pushed to pursue perfection and avoid mistakes are being set up for failure in the job market.

According to a college math instructor in California, “When you’re a software engineer you really have to drive towards perfection because every mistake that you make will show at some point and cost the company, so you’re under a lot of stress to be perfect.”

Unfortunately, “if you have an education system that is not encouraging that,” and instead the system easily forgives mistakes, students will collide with reality in high tech because “that is not the way Silicon Valley works.”

Rather than lowering grading standards, schools should implement higher grading practices that push students to try harder, which will lead to more learning. Despite its social-justice pretensions, equity grading is just another example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute and the author of the forthcoming book The Great Classroom Collapse: Teachers, Students, and Parents Expose the Collapse of Learning in America’s Schools. This piece first appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.