Liberal education policy in action

[Religious Dick]

Berkeley High May Cut Out Science Labs
The proposal would trade labs seen as benefiting white students for resources to help struggling students.
By Eric Klein
Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

Science teachers were understandably horrified by the proposal. "The majority of the science department believes that this major policy decision affecting the entire student body, the faculty, and the community has been made without any notification, without a hearing," said Mardi Sicular-Mertens, the senior member of Berkeley High School's science department, at last week's school board meeting.

Sincular-Mertens, who has taught science at BHS for 24 years, said the possible cuts will impact her black students as well. She says there are twelve African-American males in her AP classes and that her four environmental science classes are 17.5 percent African American and 13.9 percent Latino. "As teachers, we are greatly saddened at the thought of losing the opportunity to help all of our students master the skills they need to find satisfaction and success in their education," she told the board.

The full plan to close the racial achievement gap by altering the structure of the high school is known as the High School Redesign. It will come before the Berkeley School Board as an information item at its January 13 meeting. Generally, such agenda items are passed without debate, but if the school board chooses to play a more direct role in the High School Redesign, it could bring the item back as an action item at a future meeting.

School district spokesman Mark Coplan directed inquiries about the redesign to Richard Ng, the principal's assistant at Berkeley High and member of the School Governance Council. Ng did not return repeated calls for comment.

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

[Michael Tee]

The ideal solution to the problem is to raise the local rates so that the school board has the money to keep the science labs AND acquire the resources needed to bring black and Latino students up to speed.

Since the "conservatives" would squeal like stuck pigs at any such suggestion, while eager and anxious to spend thousands of times more Federal dollars on such worthwhile projects as maiming and butchering thousands of poor dumb fucking Arabs, I guess the next best solution is exactly what is being proposed, cut the science labs, definitely a frill, and concentrate resources on the students most in need.

I enjoyed biology, chem and physics labs in high school.  They were a welcome break from the didactic routines that constituted most of the school week, but the labs never taught us any scientific principle we didn't already know.  They merely enabled us to confirm what we had already been taught.  Whether I took the labs or didn't, my marks would have been the same, because the net accrual to my scientific knowledge based on the labs was nil.

[Amianthus]

Then you were using the labs incorrectly.

[Universe Prince]

The ideal solution to the problem is to raise the local rates

Bzzz. No, but thank you for playing. Were I a betting man, I'd lay good odds the school already has the resources necessary to give extra help to the non-white students. In any case trying to punish others for the school's problems is never going to be the ideal solution, whether that means getting rid of science labs or raising tax rates.

[Amianthus]

Berkeley High School spends $6,375 per student currently (source).

Geoffrey Canada runs the Harlem Children's Zone and spends about $5,000 per student per year and his mostly minority students equal or outperform whites in neighboring areas in many tests.

Here's an article about it: Harlem's Education Experiment Gone Right

The amount of money they throw at it is not as important as how that money is used.

[sirs]

The amount of money they throw at it is not as important as how that money is used.

BINGO  !!!

[kimba1]

uhm
I don`t understand how science lab is only helpful to white students.
is the lab whites only?

isn`t the real question ,why non-white student are not using the lab?

[Amianthus]

isn`t the real question ,why non-white student are not using the lab?

I'm guessing that hardly any non-whites sign up for advanced sciences, so the labs tend to be used only by the whites.

Time to punish 'em for being white...

[kimba1]

so asking why non-white students are not saigning for science lad is crazy talk

[Michael Tee]

<<None of this comes cheap, however: the Children's Zone annual budget is $76 million, two thirds of which comes from the private sector, and much of that from Wall Street. It comes to about $5,000 per child per year.>>

At $5,000 per child per year, $76 million serves 15,200 children.  Yet the article says that 1,2000 kids attend Canada's school.  If 1,200 kids is the correct figure, the annual budget comes to a whopping $63,333.33 per student - - roughly THREE TIMES the cost of sending the kid to an elite Manhattan private school.

$76 million in corporate "donations" means that the real cost is $76 million plus the corporate taxes that would otherwise have gone into the federal treasury had the corporations not made their "donations."  Furthermore, you have to wonder what additional bargains the school is able to pick up along the way.  If major financial institutions are funding this thing, I'm sure that whoever is supplying the school is feeling the pressure to supply at cost, or cost plus only half the normal mark-up.

I am beginning to smell one gigantic fraud here.  The scores, "outperforming the nearest white schools" for example.  My grandson in Manhattan has a choice of FOUR public elementary schools that he can attend as his "neighbourhood" school.  (Here in Toronto each kid has only one public elementary school he or she can attend - - it's based on a zone map and the location of the kid's residence in one of the zones on the map.)  Apparently not all Manhattan public elementary schools are on the same level of performance.  There is plenty of leeway for Canada to cherry-pick the schools he wants to compare his outcomes with.

I found a disturbing lack of detail in the article, a lack of specifics (HOW are they achieving these so-called phenomenal outcomes, and what would prevent the neighbourhood public schools from adopting the same measures.?)  The threats to fire teachers whose kids don't get into college seems little more than empty bombast - - the day of judgment is far off in the distant future, and the firings would undoubtedly keep this school tied up in lawsuits for the rest of its natural life.

Furthermore, the ratio was given of six "adults" (sic) per student - - not six teachers, but only six "adults."  That, combined with the longer hours and extra classroom days, indicates to me a kind of union-busting agenda here, which may be one of the real reasons why Wall Street is so generously funding this project.  At this point, we don't have any idea at all of the actual teacher:student ratio at Canada's school.

The article was in fact very disturbing - - the lack of real detail, the charismatic leader, the extravagant but totally undocumented claims of success.  I hate to say it but this whole story has FRAUD written all over it.

[Amianthus]

I hate to say it but this whole story has FRAUD written all over it.

CBS News has been following the story for 4 years, as has the Economics Dept of Harvard University, and you're so much smarter than them that you spotted the fraud right off.

Good for you. Surprised you didn't use the "Uncle Tom" epithet, since Canada is black.

Forgive me if I think that those guys know more about it than you.

[Amianthus]

At $5,000 per child per year, $76 million serves 15,200 children.  Yet the article says that 1,2000 kids attend Canada's school.  If 1,200 kids is the correct figure, the annual budget comes to a whopping $63,333.33 per student - - roughly THREE TIMES the cost of sending the kid to an elite Manhattan private school.

And perhaps you should read the story for comprehension instead of just trying to pick apart the numbers. It clearly says that 1,200 students are enrolled in the school, but that he provides services (help with studying, after school labs, medical clinics, classes for the parents, pre-k instruction, etc) for EVERY child in the zone, even those that go to public schools. The $76 million serves ALL of the children, not just those in his school. And the test scores for the children not even attending his school are higher than those in surrounding zones.

[sirs]

ouch.  That had to sting a bit

[kimba1]

but why science?

I`m pretty sure the school has a alot of non-require classes that could be dumped.

I think foriegn language is one of them

[kimba1]

opps
wrote it wrong ,i meant cut those classes to puff up science courses to help non-white students to catch up in science.

my bad