Berkeley High May Cut Out Science Labs

[Ken Morgan]

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.

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

I'm sure we're all for helping struggling students, but this is just plain dumb.

 

[xJOHNx]

So now everybody at that school will do worse...

 

[shesulsa]

Jeez.

 

[Gordon Nore]

The article is quite brief, but my guess is they take money out of science and put it into remediation for students who are performing at lower levels. They're probably looking at literacy and numeracy. Problem is, as the article suggests, they're also taking away an opportunity (science) for higher achieving students.

It sounds like a zero-sum gain. IMO you bring reading and math scores up by spending more money teaching people who are falling behind on reading and math. Smaller classes. More specialized instruction. Accomodations for evaluation and work. Modifications to the curriculum based on unique student needs.

The truth that no one wants to talk about in education is that basic literacy and numeracy instruction does not begin and end in the elementary (particularly, primary) grades. If you're teaching middle school, you're teaching kids how to read. If you're teaching high school, you're teaching kids how to read.

We teachers have to teach the students we've got, not just the students we would like to have.

 

[Makalakumu]

This is a beta test for public schools across Amerika. Science is another of those subjects that will be cut so students can meet NCLB objectives. That is the real driver behind this.

The bottom line is that all of this was designed to dumb us down. We'll have two tiers of education, exactly like we have here in Hawaii. Crappy sub par public schools that barely teach students how to read and write, and excellent private schools designed to exclude the proletariat by their high costs.

This is a sad day for public education...first they came for PE, then music, then art, then health, now science.

 

[Gordon Nore]

This is a beta test for public schools across Amerika. Science is another of those subjects that will be cut so students can meet NCLB objectives. That is the real driver behind this.

The bottom line is that all of this was designed to dumb us down. We'll have two tiers of education, exactly like we have here in Hawaii. Crappy sub par public schools that barely teach students how to read and write, and excellent private schools designed to exclude the proletariat by their high costs.

This is a sad day for public education...first they came for PE, then music, then art, then health, now science.

QFT. My personal understanding of NCLB as a Canadian is limited, but your assessment is consistent with everything I've learned so far. The more the public system is weakened, the more who will opt out and send their kids to private schools. Once a preponderance of middle class taxpayers have opted out of the public system, they are, by extenstion, less committed to it, less concerned with what is going on, less inclined to fund or support it. Simple retrenchment.

 

[Phoenix44]

Since when is science just for white kids?

 

[Makalakumu]

Since when is science just for white kids?

Since our government decided that economic slavery was the "In" thing to do to people.

 

[Carol]

Anyone got a link from a harder source? So far everything traces back to an opinion piece in the Examiner.

 

[Big Don]

Damn that Ted Kennedy!

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Pub.L. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1425, enacted January 8, 2002),[1] often abbreviated in print as NCLB and sometimes shortened in pronunciation to "nicklebee",[2] is a United States Act of Congress that was originally proposed by the administration of President George W. Bush immediately after taking office.[3] The bill, shepherded through the Senate by Senator Ted Kennedy, one of the bill's sponsors, received overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress.[4] The House of Representatives passed the bill on May 23, 2001 (voting 384-45),[5] and United States Senate passed it on June 14, 2001 (voting 91-8).[6] President Bush signed it into law on January 8, 2002.