Berkeley High School Allegedly Cuts Science Program Because It Primarily Benefits White Students

[alp227]

Berkeley High School is in the midst of a difficult debate over the elimination of science labs and five science teachers to shift resources to help struggling students. Some have objected that the science courses primarily help white students and should be reduced to add greater “equity” for struggling and minority students.

The school board insists that it is merely trying to spread resources to benefit the more students and to create a “less stressful” environment.

Read more: http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/28/high-school-officials-allegedly-cuts-science-program-because-it-primarily-benefits-white-students/

What an "embarrassment for liberalism" as one commenter on the blog put it...it combines "PC run amok" with a struggling budget!

[kestrel91316]

1. Enjoy gloating about other people's misfortune much?

Because the failure of CA to tax the uber-rich sufficiently to provide a decent education for all children in the state is indeed a grave misfortune for us ALL.

[Mz Pip]

4. Who's gloating?

There is nothing to gloat about here.

[Hannah Bell]

2. more spam from the charter school contingent that's defunding public education.

&, incidentally, working for resegregation.

[Mz Pip]

3. This kind of nonsense makes me crazy.

Are they really saying that minority kids don't benefit from taking science classes because that's what it sounds like.

Berkeley High has always had a good reputation for being one of the better high schools in the region. This is just nuts.

[Hannah Bell]

5. no, they're not. try reading. i'm rather tired of right-wing propaganda. but that's just me.

[FreakinDJ]

9. Good Call Hannah

[Mz Pip]

10. Here's a link

to the origina' article from the East Bay Express - hardly a nest of rw nut jobs.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/berkeley-high-may-cut-out-science-labs/Content?oid=1536705

[Hannah Bell]

11. east bay express = one of those yuppie ad-revenue "alternative weeklies" you get for free

that emerged in the 80s.

They're owned by out-of-area corps.

Posted October 2, 2002
Metro Newspapers Join the Ruxton Group


Phoenix, September 30, 2002- The Ruxton Group is pleased to announce the addition of the Metro Newspapers group of San Jose to its membership. Metro Newspapers includes Metro Silicon Valley, Metro Santa Cruz and the North Bay Bohemian. The combined weekly circulation of the three papers is 160,000 serving readers in the Northern California counties of Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Napa, Sonoma and Marin.

Combined with the circulation of Ruxton members SF Weekly (120,000) and the East Bay Express (65,000) this brings the total weekly Ruxton circulation in the SF Bay area to 345,000. This makes it the largest single metropolitan advertising combination in the alternative newsweekly industry. It will allow advertisers the most comprehensive coverage of the highly coveted 18 to 49-year-old demographic group in the SF Bay area

The Ruxton Group is the national sales representative for 33 alternative weeklies in major metropolitan markets across the USA. With the addition of the Metro Newspapers, the total weekly Ruxton circulation is now 2,815,000.

http://aan.org/alternative/Aan/ViewArticle?oid=114670


And since you don't seem to get it:

1. No child left behind mandates *every* kid pass their little tests or get shut down.
2. California is cutting budgets, big-time.
3. Ergo, admins have to make cuts. What will be cut? Funding to higher-level programs, because those kids will pass the stupid tests regardless.
4. Ergo, more of the best students leave the public schools for charters, enabling the folks pushing for privatization to say, "See? public schools = fail, give us the money."
5. Side benefit: they can construct propaganda like this, implying it's "PC run amuck" or some kind of discrimination that's the root of it.


It's all the same shit pushed by the same shit-meisters. OF whom there seem to be a large contingent here at this bastion of "progressive thought".

[Mz Pip]

14. How about this link?

This is an article from the Berkeley High School paper. It gives a few more details.


http://www.bhsjacket.com/?q=node/287

[Hannah Bell]

15. .high school paper. i'm sure the kids are experts on ed funding issues.

here, try this link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=219x17000

[Dinger]

21. RW Propaganda It Is. Good Call Hannah

As usual.

[snagglepuss]

6. I just briefly scanned an earlier post about goal of charter schools was

to re-introduce segergation. This seems to be playing right into that.

[FreakinDJ]

7. Possible Flame Bait - He quoted "EastBay Express"

The paper placed actor Gary Coleman on the ballot for governor in the 2003 California recall election<4> as a satirical comment on the recall of Democratic Governor Gray Davis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Bay_Express

I work in the East Bay and I've never heard of them

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. Is Science tested?

There's your answer.

[bluestateguy]

12. If I lived in Berkeley I'd be considered the "right wing"

There reaches a certain point at which being on the Left ceases to be liberalism and is just leftism. I want no part of that.

[Hannah Bell]

13. .nice non-seq, since "liberalism" has nothing to do with this story.

[old mark]

18. I used to live in Berkeley, just off University Ave in town. It can get ridiculous,

as when Jim Jones was the darling of the "left" in Bay Area politics. At the time, he was beating and starving retired and disabled members of his "temple" while taking their monthly checks for his own use. Many local Democratic pols raced to get photo ops with him,till he was exposed as a psycho criminal and fled to Central America with his poison.

I was one of the few people living there who frequented gun shops - there were several in Berkely then, and I bought a nice old Mauser rifle at one of them.

I left after a few years, came back to PA.

mark

[Hannah Bell]

19. jim jones & berkeley liberals had nothing to do with this story. It's the result of Bush's No Child

Left Behind.

Too bad the reporter chose not to make that clear.

[FrenchieCat]

16. I have mixed feelings about this.

My youngest daughter graduated from Berkeley High in 2008.
There is a caste system within the school that does bother me.
There are 4 or 5 smaller schools within the larger school,
and kids are selected for these "schools"
(my daughter was selected for one of the smaller schools),
and it is supposed to be done by lottery (but I believe only those who indicate interest),
although they make sure that there is an additional lottery for minority students.

It is comprised of a very small percentage of the overall student body,
and they are in fact treated as "preferred Students".

I don't favor this small schools within the larger school concept, even if my child benefitted from it, because it starts in the Freshman year, and so once you are in, you're in, and if you out, too bad for you....although a tiny percentage can try again in the next year due to attrition.

So what has always concerned me is that Berkeley High operates differently for different folks.

It is a school that has always had all of the resources found in a really posh private high school (my other daughter attended a top private high school in the Bay Area which is how I know), but not everyone uses these resources to their benefit, and in fact if everyone used those resources the way they should be used, the school couldn't maintain them.

So you have many of the White Students using the resources quite agressively,
as they should, and you have a lot of the minority students who don't.....many because
they aren't interested, but many others because they don't realize that they are available
and it isn't made as easy as it could be for them to know how.

It is a strange set up, and I don't think it is intentional,
but because of the school's structure, there are subgroups in this school
that I don't think have to be. If they had a class that all students would have to take
initially on how to use those resources, this might help....but I don't believe anything like that is offered. I will say that it is a very large school, as it is the only public high school in Berkeley.

I have to imagine that instead of "cutting" the science department in such a severe way,
they could have done possibly approach it differently to encourage minority participation,
therefore still addressing the problems of the struggling students in a perhaps novel way.

but of course, budgets have been cut.

Even as a former parent of a minority student, I don't know where I fall on this....which I guess is why there is a debate going on.

[Hannah Bell]

17. no child left behind doesn't test it. forced cut.

[Dinger]

20. Unrec

Flamebait.

[FBaggins]

22. I don't read the original article as really being about race

though there's no doubt that the spun piece tries to make it so.

The racial connection is simply that the group making the decision (a group whose existence puzzles me, but that's another story) was tasked with trying to close a performance gap that appeared to be racial in nature. That could very likely be expected to shift funding toward under-performing areas at the school (remedial tutoring... whatever) at the expense of some others. I'm not saying that I necessarily would agree with the decision, but even with the quote about one person's perception of those classes, this doesn't boil down to science being for whites "so let's cut it".

The really problem this identifies, along with the perennial underfunding and likely misuse of existing funding, is that closing a performance gap is far easier to accomplish by pulling down the top end of the scale than it is to pull up the bottom end. Like those schools that have reduced support for gifted/talented programs to focus funding on special education on the assumption that the smart kids don't need our help to succeed.

It's misguided. Understandable perhaps... but misguided.

[Hannah Bell]

23. tell it to george bush. no child left behind forces the action. nothing to do with

your musings on "pulling the top down".

[FBaggins]

24. Your knee-jerk reactions don't provide much illumination

I agree that NCLB has caused many problems, but there's no evidence to support jumping to that conclusion here.

A response to federal stimuli would come from the top down in the state and/or county. The decision wouldn't be made by a group of parents/students/teachers as this one is claimed to have been made.

[FBaggins]

25. The "science labs" that are being cut don't appear to be what you might think they are.

Reading the OP and the linked story, one would get the impression that the SGC was cutting chemistry or physics from the curriculum.

The link below provides more information. It appears that the labs in question were before/after school programs, not regular classroom instruction.

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-12-17/article/34289?headline=Plan-to-Eliminate-Science-Labs-Stirs-Controversy-at-Berkeley-High

[tonysam]

26. Today the L.A. Times has a piece about Berkeley High

Aaron Glimme's Advanced Placement chemistry students straggle in, sleepy. It is 7:30 a.m. at Berkeley High School. The day doesn't officially begin for another hour. They pull on safety goggles, measure out t-butyl alcohol and try to determine the molar mass of an unknown substance by measuring how much its freezing point decreases.

In the last school year, 82% of Berkeley's AP chemistry students passed the rigorous exam, which gives college credit for high school work. The national passing rate is 55.2%. The school's AP biology and physics students are even more successful.

Most districts would not argue with such a record, but Berkeley High's science labs are embroiled in a debate over scarce resources with overtones of race, class and politics.

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