Segregation Forever: The Biden Administration is urging states to impose race-based practices in the schools.

In Madison, Wisconsin, the school district employs an “equity strategy” for teaching kids reading and math based on “demographic categories, including race.” Elementary school teachers are ordered to “prioritize your African American students meeting with you first and more often.” Other students, including other minorities and English language learners, are to be instructed “second.” The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, where we work, sued over this policy.

Madison is no outlier. Denver Public Schools has resolved to “prioritize and target the[ ] academic achievement” of “Black and African-American students.” Based purely on skin color, Denver schools provide “more rigorous coursework,” “a plan of action to increase their success,” and “progress toward these goals and increasing black student achievement.” Non-black students? No special coursework, plans, or monitoring.

Seattle Public Schools has taken the equity pathway in mathematics by changing curriculum and lowering standards with something called “Math Ethnic Studies Framework.” Seattle students must consider “who holds power in a mathematical classroom,” “who gets to say if an answer is right,” and whether they can “recognize and name oppressive mathematical practices in your experience.”

Other pathways to equity include requiring all students to take the same remedial course regardless of ability, canceling Advanced Placement courses, and even changing the way teachers grade to eliminate low scores, which the San Diego Unified School District recently did explicitly to combat racism. Other schools similarly embrace an initiative called Grading for Equity which, for instance, directs teachers not to grade homework because doing so replicates racial disparities. In a telling gaffe, one public high school teacher in Wisconsin admitted to parents that “slowing down the class is equity!”

But the equity push goes beyond instructional changes. It requires treating non-white students differently in other areas. Centennial Elementary in Olympia, Washington offers a “BIPOC-only” student lunch group for fourth graders. Public schools in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin offer an annual, all-expenses paid trip for black students to visit colleges. Sun Prairie also holds an award ceremony exclusively for “Black Excellence Achievement Makers” (BEAM) and is one of several Wisconsin school districts that hosts a “Dear Diary” mentoring program open only to black girls.