Supposedly Equitable Policies Turn Out Not to Be Good Enough for Advocates' Own Kids
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder calls out the hypocrisy of education leaders who advocate for equity policies while sending their own children to schools that don't follow those policies.
Key Takeaways
- The hypocrisy test is revealing - If a policy isn't good enough for your own children, it probably isn't good enough for anyone's
- Actions speak louder than advocacy - Where leaders send their own kids tells you what they really think about education quality
- All children deserve what privileged children get - If private schools and affluent public schools maintain high standards, all schools should
Transcript
I'm astounded at some of the terrible policies that are being called equitable or being justified in the name of justice and equity.
And I think who would actually want these policies for their own children?
This seems to be the common thread in just about any bad policy that's being implemented in the name of equity and yet actually works against equity.
is that people don't pursue it for their own children.
That's a crucial distinction.
People think that these policies are good enough for other people's kids and will even call them equitable, but they won't accept those same policies for their own kids.
So here's an example.
The California Mathematics Framework that said it would be more equitable if nobody took Algebra 1 in the eighth grade.
That would be more equitable, more kids would have time to develop the foundation, and then more kids would succeed in ninth grade algebra.
That was the idea put forth in the name of equity.
But I saw on Twitter yesterday that somebody called out one of the authors or the contributors, like one of the brains behind the California Mathematics Framework, Joe Bowler, who's big in the math education world.
And it turned out that her kid went to a private school that did teach math in the eighth grade.
And I haven't fact-checked this.
You can fact-check it yourself if you want.
But I think behind every bad policy that's justified in the name of equity, whether it's a grading policy, an attendance policy, a graduation policy, a discipline policy, a restorative justice policy, all of these policies sound great until you have to put your own kids on the line.
And then people say, well, wait a minute.
I actually want to make sure that this works.
I actually want something that is proven for my kids.
And my question is, why don't we have that same standard for policies that affect other people's kids?
I think that's the bottom line when it comes to a lot of these really disastrous policies, policies that have made schools unsafe, that have made schools unmanageable, that have made violence and disruption the norm.
Like, oh, we're trauma informed.
We want to be equitable and trauma informed.
So we're going to let one kid disrupt the entire class every single day and scare everybody else.
That's not equitable.
That is not what we would tolerate for our own kids.
So it shouldn't be what we tolerate and advocate for other people's kids.
Let me know what you think about this.
Are you seeing other cases where people have a different standard for their own kids and how they are educated versus these supposedly equitable policies?
Let me know what you think.