What does 'equity' mean?

 by Vinay Prasad

Recently, a friend was telling me about her daughter in SF public schools. The daughter, a 6th grader, already knows the math that is being taught in her class. The parent asked if she could be advanced to a higher math class. The school said the answer is no, and the reason:

Because of “equity”

What precisely does that mean? Practically it means that because other 6th graders are not yet capable of 6th grade math, this 6th grader can’t take advanced math because it would be unfair. In other words: because some kids are struggling, this kid cannot soar.

That is a brain dead and bankrupt ideology. Because the school is not able to keep the poorest performers up to snuff, the students who thrive must be held back. No honorable society would do this.

In fact, it is not equitable. It is fair to the students who are lagging to get extra attention, but it is not fair to the students who are thriving to be held back, and prevented from learning more. In fact, it strikes me as abusive, and limiting their potential.

The word equity is used more and more often to describe practices that I think are patently absurd. It is used to justify failure. Consider this example from medicine….

Currently, a number of medical interviews are taking place on zoom. That means rising residents don’t get to visit the campus. Worse, it means that all dialog happens in the impersonal and cold space of the online forum. Many hate zoom interviews.

Why do they continue? To me, it reeks of laziness. We went to zoom because of the pandemic, and we stayed there because faculty and staff are too lazy to come to work in person.

Because of zoom interviews, students can interview at dozens or more places with no commitment. They don’t have to shell out for flights or a hotel. So we don’t know how serious they are.

The NRMP created a signaling mechanism to try to overcome this. In other words, they invented a medication to treat the side effects of the first one.

Why do zoom interviews continue? Some say ‘equity’. Not all students can afford to travel. But consider how laughable this statement is. The same students who you just billed 200k in tuition and spent 80k in living expenses, can’t borrow 5 k to travel to interviews? If you cared about equity, pay for their hotel and flights, like any other job would, and don’t make up bullshit about cost being the motivating force.

‘Equity’ is just used to justify laziness.

The idea that people should be treated equally and fairly is a good one. Hampering a student who is thriving or making interviews worse is not fair, it is the broken ideology of ‘equity’. It has to go.

https://www.drvinayprasad.com/p/what-does-equity-mean