In 2025, American students from kindergarten through law school are dumber than they’ve ever been, and we needn’t look beyond the nation’s abysmal math and English literacy NAEP scores to prove it. Now, more than 200 California bar exam takers have had their failing scores adjusted to “pass,” indicating that the newest crop of California lawyers are dumber than they’ve ever been, too. What’s more, under simultaneous consideration by the state bar is a rule allowing students who registered for — but withdrew from — taking the bar exam altogether, to practice law under the supervision of “qualified” attorneys, bar exam be hanged.

Something nefarious is a foot, and its name is equity.

Public schools in Arlington, Virginia, allow students to redo assignments, turn in late work, and reduce the weight given to homework and quizzes. Georgia public schools went more than three years without assigning A-F grades to any student in the state.

Portland, Oregon public schools have implemented grading practices that bar teachers from assigning “zeros” to students who cheat or fail to turn in assignments — a process ostensibly geared toward eliminating “racial disparities” and “inequities” in grading and instruction.

Education failures like these bear a direct relationship to “equity” — a principle geared toward equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity — and its ruinous impact on every aspect of American learning. Equitable grading for example, a concept popularized by Joe Feldman, author of the book “Grading for Equity,” seeks to replace traditional grading concepts which use measurable inputs and outcomes (like class attendance and participation, test scores, and completed assignments) with “equitable grading” techniques that rely on “accuracy,” “bias resistance,” and “motivation.” This noxious trend has replaced what little academic rigor American educational institutions do impart with practices that dumb down all students and guarantee the equivalent of academic participation trophies.

If you think that this sounds unfair, lowers the expectations of all students, or weakens academic rigor, you’d be right on all accounts. 

If you think that it might cause confusion for teachers, students, and parents, or reduce clear metrics by which students can be measured, or give students a false sense of security as they approach higher education and the workforce, you’d be right again.

Among popular “equitable grading” practices are “minimum grading” policies, which prevent teachers from assigning students less than 50% credit. Common, too, are prohibitions on grade penalties for late work and bans on grading homework and class participation. But not only do these exercises risk removing both discretion from teachers and crucial incentives for students to study hard, they dilute expectations and are nearly guaranteed to harm students they are purportedly meant to help.

Equitable grading policies are also big business, as our research shows.

In fact, a small research cohort yields evidence of expenditures of $9 million in American tax dollars spent on equity consultants since 2014, with California as the biggest offender. Our survey of 39 school districts across seven states in the past 11 years is proof positive that many educational institutions are more concerned with race essentialism and progressive, jargon-laden social experimentation than they are with preparing their students for the real — and often intellectually challenging — world.

When activists demand “equity,” what they’re really saying is that the basic American value of color-blind equality of opportunity, with the rules applying equally to everyone, regardless of race — is itself, racist, because equality of opportunity doesn’t always produce equality of results. But “equity,” or attempting to achieve equality of results, requires the discrimination of one group over another — even though both started from the very same place, with the very same teachers, tools, resources, and tests at their disposal. “Equity” flies in the face of the Constitution’s guarantee that all Americans receive “equal protection” of the laws, with none garnering more or less.

Only 36% of Americans can pass a multiple-choice test consisting of items from the U.S. Citizenship Test. An 8th grade final exam from 1895 has stumped even the brightest of today’s scholars. As rigor falls, so do standardized test scores — hence the decision of many colleges and universities to make college applications “test-optional,” and eschew the traditionally required ACT or SAT exam scores.

State and local education institutions must focus on rigorous instruction and strong family-community ties that build trust, not on ensuring every student is pushed forward, no matter their readiness, in order to meet an unspoken social, equity-driven metric. This is how employment — and ultimately, economic — crises are made.

American students need more rigor, more discipline, more accountability, and more stringent grading systems.

And please, for Heaven’s sake, let’s get better lawyers.

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Sarah Parshall Perry is vice president and legal fellow at Defending Education.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire. 

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