In a turn of events that insults the intelligence of minority students and their families, Alabama will now use race as a determining factor in the evaluation of students.

Robby Soave of The Daily Caller reports.

Education: Alabama officially expects less of blacks, Hispanics than whites

A recently implemented plan that allows Alabama to use race-based benchmarks for student progress is drawing harsh criticism from conservative education reformers and minority parents.

Last month, the federal Department of Education approved Alabama’s Plan 2020, which alters the state’s federally-required system of measuring K-12 students’ college readiness. Students will now be broken into predominantly race-based categories — American Indian; Asian or Pacific Islander; black; English language learners; Hispanic; multiracial; poor; special education; and white — and expectations will be lower or higher depending upon the group.

For example, 91.5 percent of white third-graders should be proficient in mathematics, whereas only 85.5 percent of Hispanic students and 79 percent of black students will be expected to pass, according to the Tuscaloosa News.

Minority parents were not pleased with the new measurements.

“I think it’s dumbing our race down and preparing our boys for prison,” said Tim Robinson, a black man and father of two elementary school children. “The teachers aren’t even going to teach all of them anymore. Not the black boys and girls. And if we sit by and let this happen, it’s on us.”

Other minority parents echoed his concerns.

Elois Zeanah, president of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women, condemned the race-based standards.

“Isn’t this discrimination? Doesn’t this imply that some students are not as smart as others depending on their genetic and economic backgrounds?” she asked in a statement.