An Oak Park and River Forest High School administrator had just finished a presentation last week about student assessment when school board member Ralph Martire nervously seized upon a phrase that had popped up several times.
Within days a website called West Cook News used the presentation as the basis for a story that claimed the school was creating a race-based grading system that would require teachers “To account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students.”
Nothing in the presentation suggested such a policy, and school officials say the story is false.
Magnified by influencers and conservative media, the story rocketed around the internet, leading to volleys of insulting comments and what the school called “Unnecessary confusion.”
Darren Bailey, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, told West Cook News the supposed grading policy was “The latest example of ‘woke’ ideology polluting our schools” and promised to stamp it out if he wins the election.
Experts say the episode illustrates how quickly a fake story can travel through cyberspace – and how difficult it can be to correct.
“Somebody’s really got to be following the story in a sustained way,” said Nikki Usher, a journalism professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has lectured on misinformation.
“The majority of people who consume news and information aren’t doing that with this kind of story; it just exists in the ether. Once something ricochets across the internet it’s too late.”
West Cook News is part of a venture called Local Government Information Services, or LGIS, that runs more than 30 localized websites in Illinois.
In recent weeks, LGIS sites have run several culture war-themed stories that were preceded or followed by stories featuring Bailey’s comments.
According to Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC), “West Cook News is a conservative news and opinion website published by Metric Media LLC that is designed to look like a local news source (Imposter Site). Metric Media publishes over 1000 websites with the same design, relying on algorithmically produced content to promote conservative views.”
MBFC further reports that the primary purpose of the Metric Media imposter sites is to provide a vehicle for conservative candidates to promote their message. They cite the New York Times which states “Many of their stories are ordered up by conservative political groups and corporate P.R. firms.”
In a presentation on student assessment made at the May 26 school board meeting, administrator Laurie Fiorenza said the school plans to establish an equitable grading philosophy by next year.
The only mention of race came in a slide, skipped over at the meeting, that said the school would evaluate grading using “Evidence-backed research and the racial equity analysis tool.”
Martire, who outside of his school board duties runs a left-leaning nonprofit called the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, gave a benign explanation of the contemplated changes, using the example of a student who scores a zero on a quiz but later shows command of the material.
“Why should those zero points hold down that kid’s grade when the kid is demonstrating mastery of the academic content?” he said at the meeting.
“That’s what moving to an equitable grading system is. It’s understanding that students grow at different paces.”
The West Cook News story, published Monday without a writer’s byline, didn’t mention that.
Instead, it claimed without evidence the school will “Order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students.”
One day later, the website published Bailey’s take.
“Any school district attempting to infect wokeness into the grading policies will be ineligible for state funding,” he said.
“There will be no place for left-wing ideology in the classroom in a Darren Bailey administration.”
In a statement issued Tuesday, school officials said the story was not true, and that they have no intention of implementing a race-based grading policy.
“We encourage the community to seek information directly from the district or other reliable news sources rather than internet sources that continue to share inaccurate information,” they said.
By then the story had already spread widely even as Facebook slapped it with a “False information” tag.
A version carried by the conservative Breitbart website accumulated more than 10,000 Facebook shares and 8,000 comments.
Primary Source: Chicago Tribune
Secondary Source: Media Bias Fact Check
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