The Berkeley High School Governance Council is considering, with “virtually unanimous” agreement, an ingenious (or perhaps ungenius) proposal to close its “dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.” (HatTip to a reader from Berkeley.)
The solution is both obvious and simple: “eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.”
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.
Once the principle underlying this proposal is accepted, the possibilities become virtually endless. True, as in any war there will be collateral damage — in this case, the minority students who will be casualties along with the whites. For example, Mardi Sicular-Mertens, the senior member of Berkeley High School’s science department, told the Governance Council that “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.”
Well, war is hell, and one can easily understand why the Berkeley High School Governance Council would conclude that depriving a few minority students of science labs and advanced placement courses is a small price to pay for the advantage of depriving a larger number of whites and Asians (who presumably are not a minority) of those classes.
But wait. Why stop with high school science? The last times I looked (here and here), blacks made up only 4% of the entering class at that other large school in Berkeley, the University of California. If it were closed, think how many resources the state could “free up … to help struggling students” at community colleges, city colleges, and the less white (or Asian) state colleges and universities.
UPDATE
See Linda Seebach’s in-depth discussion of Berkeley’s educational “equity” wrecking ball, here.
John, It was this sort of thinking that lead me to home school many years ago. Millions are made available for the numbskulls who in many instances really won’t ever amount to much, while tiny if any amounts are made available for brighter students or those students who simply are willing to work harder.
Homeschooling allowed us to move faster and to study those things which interested my son.
What’s really silly is that the kids with resources at home won’t get hurt, while those who get all their education through school will. I learned computer programming at home, for example, because my dad was an IBM engineer; if computer programming classes weren’t given to others, well, I wasn’t hurt.
While they think this may help relative achievement by raising up those lower [and not getting those higher to advance], they may find there are loads of unintended consequences.
This is a horrible proposal. But you are misleading with the facts. At Berkeley High, labs are taught before regular school hours during period 0, or after regular hours during period 7… this is so labs get extra time…
The proposal would eliminate labs taught at these times and require that labs be taught during regular science class time. When I was in high school in the 80’s, that is how it was done. Not ideal at all because labs DO need more time.
I teach physics at a university and am on the tenure track… so I know the importance of science and labs to education…
But try to be honest about the debate… I agree it is a horrible proposal and should be vigorously opposed… but you are still being disingenuous.
You’re right jab, it’s not a matter of labs being cut completely.
It’s a matter of the instructional time being cut a great deal.
Again, those who have resources outside the school won’t be hurt as much. Those for whom school is the only place where they’ll learn these concepts will be hurt. And it seems to me that’s where the unintended consequences will come from. The next thing we’ll hear is that AP science classes will be cut entirely, as they find the race gap has gotten even worse.
And they’ll find that the gap gets worse and worse as they keep trying to cut down the upper end.