IF WE DON'T WRITE IT DOWN, IT HASN'T HAPPENED.

That appears to be the approach the San Diego school board is taking to underachievement that might be correlated with ethnicity.  Reason's Robby Soave isn't having it.

Grades "shall not be influenced by behavior or factors that directly measure students' knowledge and skills in the content area," which sounds like a recipe for highly subjective grading. And a great deal of leniency will now be given to students who don't do the work for a course, including those who don't show up at all: Attendance can no longer be a factor in grading.

In any case, ending these kinds of grades doesn't actually eliminate the underlying inequities that produced the disparate Fs. It may actually cover those inequities up: Given that grades are a tool for evaluating students' progress, the district is essentially announcing that it will no longer gather as much evidence about the negative social phenomena it would probably like to address. Better grades do not mean students will suddenly have a better grasp of the material. They certainly won't be better prepared for college (where traditional grades are very much still a thing).

Indeed, this comes perilously close to addressing poverty by no longer tallying the number of homeless people—or, to use a timely example, President Donald Trump's frustration that increasing [Wuhan coronavirus] testing will make the epidemic look worse. Coronavirus cases exist even if they go undetected; similarly, minority students who are falling behind their classmates will be falling behind even if their teachers aren't giving them Fs.

Maybe it won't matter, anyway, because the productive people are leaving California and there won't be any labor market tests for these by-the-grace-of-San-Diego-not-failing students to fail.