Fact check: False claim that Illinois high school will use race-based grading

Bayliss Wagner, USA TODAY
·6 min read

The claim: Illinois high school to implement 'race-based grading system'

Rumors that a high school in Oak Park, Illinois, will implement a "race-based grading system" generated a storm of national and local criticism thanks to social media users, but they aren't true.

"OPRF (Oak Park and River Forest High School) to implement race-based grading system in 2022-23 school year," reads the headline of a May 30 article from West Cook News, which presents itself as a local news outlet.

The article claims this new grading system "will require teachers next school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students" and that students won't be penalized for missing class, misbehaving or failing to complete homework.

More than 7,000 Facebook users shared the article within a week. Another 2,000 retweeted a version of the story shared by the popular conservative Twitter account Libs of TikTok, which has 1.2 million followers.

But the article's sensational claims have no basis in fact.

Video and documents from the school board meeting reveal no mention of a race-based grading system or several other aspects of the West Cook News article.

The school said in a statement that it has not approved or considered grading policies that take students' race and ethnicity into account.

"OPRFHS does not, nor has it ever had a plan to, grade any students differently based on race," the May 31 statement reads.

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West Cook News did not return multiple requests for comment from USA TODAY asking for evidence for its claims. Libs of TikTok provided no evidence to support their claim when contacted by USA TODAY.

School never implemented or considered race-based grading

West Cook News is part of a group called Local Government Information Services, which in turn is part of a nationwide network of more than 1,300 websites the New York Times reported in 2020 is “built not on traditional journalism but on propaganda ordered up by dozens of conservative think tanks, political operatives, corporate executives and public-relations professionals." Most Local Government Information Services stories are written by algorithm, the co-founder told the Columbia Journalism Review in 2018.

The West Cook News article, which has no byline aside from Local Government Information Services, bases its claims on a presentation delivered by Laurie Fiorenza, assistant superintendent for student learning, at a May 26 school board meeting.

The article linked to Fiorenza's slide deck but excluded the YouTube live stream of the board meeting and an 11-page report that accompanied the presentation.

These three sources show that Fiorenza and the board neither announced nor voted on any changes to the high school's grading policies at the meeting. They also didn't suggest those policies would "account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students," as the article purports.

Rather, in the May 26 presentation, Fiorenza updated the board on progress toward its goal of researching, codifying and implementing what it calls "equitable grading practices" by the fall of 2023.

Because the board is still in the research stage, it hasn't yet defined what this will look like in terms of grading policy changes for the district, according to the presentation. Changes to grading policies will only occur after recommendations are made to the board at a public meeting, the school's statement reads.

But the board explained the concept during the meeting, and it has nothing to do with changing students' grades based on race.

"Equitable grading ... is not a dumbing down," Board of Education Secretary Ralph Martire said in a comment following Fiorenza's presentation. "It is not making concessions for this, that and a third thing. it's finding a way to be objective about determining whether a student has mastered the academic content, because too often, subjective evaluations are made ... and that's where inequity comes in."

The article claims the district policy "will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students."

But neither Fiorenza nor documents from the presentation mention Black students at all. The only mention of race in the presentation came in the last slide, which states that the high school's administration and faculty will use "evidence-backed research and the racial equity analysis tool" to examine grading practices.

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The tool contains questions that help determine whether proposed policies or resource allocations "are meeting the goal of removing systemic barriers and providing greater access to achievement for all students," Karin Sullivan, spokeswoman for Oak Park and River Forest High School, wrote in an email to USA TODAY.

In its five-year plan, the district says it aims to achieve racial equity by "eliminating race, socioeconomic status and other social factors as predictors of students' academic achievement and social-emotional growth."

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that an Illinois high school will implement a "race-based grading system." The school said in a statement that it has not approved or considered grading policies that take students' race and ethnicity into account. The article where this claim originated provides as evidence a school board presentation that makes no mention of such a system and only mentions race once.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: False claim that high school will use race-based grading