Berkeley High’s School Governance Council voted this week to approve principal Jim Slemp’s latest proposal for a new schedule at BHS. It now goes to the Berkeley Unified School District (although Slemp claims that the proposal doesn’t need BUSD approval).
The most contentious aspect of the new schedule is the elimination of before- and after-school time for science labs. The extra funding that goes to science will be used instead for unspecified “equity grants”, aimed at reducing the achievement gap in the school.
BHS science teachers have written an open letter to the school community. If you’re concerned about the future of science at the school you should read the whole thing, but here’s the key passage:
This proposal flies in the face of the BSEP mandate and the 2020 Vision. The science labs during 0 and 7th periods provide weekly enrichment and satisfy UC and CSU requirements that college prep science classes offer 20% of instructional time for hands-on lab activities. In addition, the extra lab periods provide additional time to support struggling students. The science program meets the goals articulated by both BSEP and the 2020 Vision providing enrichment, support for all students and UC requirements.
The extra time BSEP funding supports allows BHS to maintain an outstanding AP science program. Many of our students take and succeed in three AP level sciences courses as first year courses. Our students’ performance on the AP exams well exceeds the national average. These courses would have to become 2nd year offerings if the labs were eliminated. Approximately 600 students per year enroll in our AP programs. All of our students take Advanced Biology, most take chemistry, physics, or environmental science or anatomy and the extra time provides the support students need to develop a deep understanding of these topics.
The elimination of these labs would reduce instructional time by more than 21% (30% in AP classes). such devastating cuts would force science teachers to eliminate many of the labs that enrich the experience for students by having them “do science”.
It’s difficult to decipher all the signatures, but it looks like the letter is signed by 18 of the school’s science teachers. It calls for parents to phone, email or write to Slemp and the school board to oppose the rescheduling plan.
Parents are also being urged to send a letter to school superintendent William Huyett and to show their support at next week’s meeting of the school board.
Photo by Adam Coster from Flickr
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I am trying to understand the issues here well enough to form an opinion about the disputes, but the reporting of the issues (that I’ve seen) isn’t making that possible. Perhaps others are in the same boat.
I understand that it is accepted as true that BHS has an achievement gap that is especially strong along racial lines. How is this measured and what are the numbers?
To try to close the achievement gap, the action plan proposes a number of measures to redirect resources to better serve students currently likely to be under-achievers. One example is the end of the science labs, a program said to be mainly of benefit to high achieving students. Are the objections to this plan based on a belief that it is wrong *in principle* to redirect spending that benefits high-achievers to programs aimed at helping low-achieving students?
How much money is on the table in the question of the science labs?
What alternative proposals, if any, have been made for finding that much money (rather than canceling the labs)?
Is there a “typical” student, or range of typical situations that characterizes the students who benefit from the science labs? For each of those typical situations, how, in detail, is the students experience of BHS and eventual level of achievement likely to change?
A charge is made that the spending plans for the redirected money are “vague” and that they are contrary to the mandate of the BSEP taxation. The Principle’s action plan does not seem remarkably vague to me, so, what specific charges are being made about how the money will be mis-spent? The BSEP legislation does not look to me to contain anything contradictory to the proposed use of funds, on what basis is the charge of contradicting the BSEP mandate made?
The action plan offers specific goals. One example that lept out at me is the goal of ensuring that every student receives individualized advisement during their high school career. Intuitively, that sounds like a fine idea but intuition is not obviously a trustworthy guide here. What evidence-based rationale exists for the Principle’s action plan? That is, why should it we believe it is an effective and efficient way to close the achievement gap?
The petition letter which parents are asked to sign offers this rationale for protecting the science labs: “The issues facing our students (global warming, the destruction of the ozone layer, urban pollution, health issues such as diabetes, cancer, etc.) require that our students be well-grounded in the underlying science behind these issues.” That seems a peculiar list. Surely there are many other scientific issues of grave importance to the students. Surely there are also many non-scientific concerns of grave concern – not least of which are our nation’s problems with growing divides between economic classes, and racial inequities along those divides. The list of issues “(global warming, …)” smacks of pandering and fear mongering. Are the opponents of the plan arguing that canceling the labs will make it significantly less likely that BHS students become well-grounded in the underlying science? If so, why?
Finally, apparently a very large segment of the BHS student population currently is quite unlikely to become well-grounded in that science because they are, in general, under-achieving. Is that not the case? If that is the case, then isn’t there something of a trade-off to be made here to raise those under-achieving students, even if it means slightly slowing down the high-achieving students?
The current push seems to be for smaller and more communities of students, “small schools”. However, from the statistics I saw a year or two ago at a BUSD board meeting the performance of students in the current small schools over the previous 5+ years has not improved much, if at all.
The Gates Foundation has stopped funding the ‘small school’ movement because of lack of results. Instead they have switched to researching teacher quality issues. Are we barking up the wrong tree here?
Also, is Berkeley particular heartless in light of the statement used to justify the drastic changes…
“Berkeley High was identified as the high school with the largest racial equity/achievement gap in the state. This is unconscionable.”
I’ve read this from BHS Principal Slemp and now in a public letter from religious congregations published in the Daily Planet in support of the 2020 Vision plan
BHS is the sole high school in a city with it’s own racial equity/achievement gap. I would bet that most towns this size have multiple high schools, and most high schools likely serve more homogeneous racial and economic areas. With us the advantages and disadvantages of diversity come all in one package.
It’s no more “unconscionable” than the sharp differences between inner city high schools and wealthier suburban ones; it’s just that the gap at BHS is within one high school’s boundaries. It’s unconscionable that there are gaps between high schools throughout the state and country. In this sense Berkeley High stands out as a microcosm of society with all its advantages and disadvantages. This doesn’t mean that we don’t work on the gap, just that statements like that above shouldn’t make us feel guiltier than the rest of society, at least that’s how I see it.
Thomas,
You ask many questions. Here are a few answers.
Here is a reasonably accurate picture of the BHS achievement gap:
http://api.cde.ca.gov/AcntRpt2009/2009APRSchAYPChart.aspx?allcds=01611430131177
Many would contend that it is so large at least in part due to the Town and Gown aspect; Berkeley has a lot of genius kids. Many of them often help their peers in class. Also, the Black middle class has largely fled Berkeley High so the students of color are skewed toward the economically disadvantaged group. Why do Latino kids do better? Maybe that middle class has not fled? Who knows. The way the district defines the gap (via the 2020 Vision plan), bringing the top down doesn’t count so “closing the gap” is a misnomer; BHS’s charge is to bring the bottom up. Closing the gap involves students currently at the bottom of the gap achieving proficiency in math and language (ELA or English Language Arts).
Nonetheless, the achievement gap is very disturbing, and it is true all over the country. Berkeley happens to be a city with very high highs and very low lows, all in one school of way over 3000 kids with overcrowded classrooms in the large programs. We also have teachers who vehemently disagree with each other about pedagogies for how to teach those students. That is the basic disagreement between large school and small school philosophies. Right now, the small schools seem to have a basic resistance to evaluation which many find disturbing. Other schools that use evaluation extensively are experimental programs like Harlem Children’s Zone featured on 60 Minutes last week:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/04/60minutes/main5889558.shtml?tag=currentVideoInfo;segmentUtilities
Harlem Children’s Zone is very successful. They evaluate everything and change programs that are not working. You’d be hard pressed to find any evaluation of any small school program at BHS right now.
The achievement gap starts very young. Today on npr there was a story about this. “There was a study that found that children from an educated or college-educated middle-class family will have heard 30 million words or utterances by the time they were three years old, which was 20 million more than the children from poor families, so this gap is what everybody in education is saying how do we overcome this, because if we could get children going to school prepared, then they’re more likely to do better later on.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121374125
In Berkeley 8-10 years ago, many kids who needed resource were denied. I know because my kid was one of them. So the kids in high school now are that group. In Albany at that time, all a student needed was to be reading below grade level and they went to a reading class after school. In Berkeley you needed hours of testing and then they denied many kids. So BUSD is reaping what it sowed. That is another part of today’s situation.
Regarding your phrase “… the science labs, a program said to be mainly of benefit to high achieving students.”
Science labs are for all BHS students, period.
“Are the objections to this plan based on a belief that it is wrong *in principle* to redirect spending that benefits high-achievers to programs aimed at helping low-achieving students?”
I don’t think so. Many BHS parents seem genuinely distressed by the achievement gap. The charge is sometimes made that parents of high-achieving students don’t care about low-achieving students but that seems more like a divisive tactic than anything else. Many parents were opposed to the last two plans to address the achievement gap, but it is just possible that they were both terrible ideas.
There has never been an open discussion of possible ways to address the achievement gap, just plans formulated by the principal and rubber stamped by the SGC with little or no input from parents; this happened this year and last year. Some people may argue with the plan in principle. The vast majority will see it as vague, political rhetoric with no scientific basis or data to back it up. For a fine review of this dynamic, please go to the BUSD website and read through these minutes:
http://www.berkeley.net/board-meeting-information/
Click on the Minutes (3rd column) February 11, 2009.
“What alternative proposals, if any, have been made for finding that much money (rather than canceling the labs)?”
None. No one was allowed to discuss other funding ideas or other ideas at all.
“Is there a “typical” student, or range of typical situations that characterizes the students who benefit from the science labs?”
All BHS students need 3 lab sciences to graduate. Applications to UC’s recommend 4 lab sciences in their a-g credits. Struggling students, regular students and AP students all benefit from the extra time that labs afford.
“For each of those typical situations, how, in detail, is the students experience of BHS and eventual level of achievement likely to change?”
AP classes will no longer be available on a first time basis. Struggling students will have to learn the same amount of material in less time. The school’s rating will go down and struggling students will probably have a lower pass rate. Wealthier students will probably hire more tutors to make up for the difference in class time. Less wealthy students will not be able to afford that so they will just fail more.
If you have questions about the principal’s plan you’ll have to try to get an answer from him. Good luck with that.
“Are the opponents of the plan arguing that canceling the labs will make it significantly less likely that BHS students become well-grounded in the underlying science? If so, why?”
Because lab science requires lab time. Duh? (Maybe I misunderstood this question.)
OK – that’s quite enough from me. Good questions.
Roxanne, thank you very much.
You wrote: “Here is a reasonably accurate picture of the BHS achievement gap:
http://api.cde.ca.gov/AcntRpt20009/2009APRSchAYPChart.aspx?allcds=01611430131177 ”
You also mentioned: “Also, the Black middle class has largely fled Berkeley High so the students of color are skewed toward the economically disadvantaged group.” That seems central to me:
I would like to see some of those numbers broken out more. In particular, the graphs place each represented non-white racial group below the performance of “White (not of Hispanic origin)”, all such groups other than Aians below the schoolwide average, and “African American or Black (not of Hispanic origin)” as below the proficiency target. The graphs also place the category “Socioeconomically Disadvantaged” very low.
The action plan emphasizes racial inequity, particularly effecting “black or brown” students. Therefore, I would like to know how students in the “African American or Black (not of Hispanic origin)” category perform *compared to their socioeconomic peers*. In other words, which is the more accurate predictor of a student’s chances for showing proficiency: race, or socioeconomic class?
It’s not a neutral question because under the law and our systems of jurisprudence, certain racial categories are “suspect categories” (e.g., historically subject to oppression and thus entitled to an abundance of favorable caution when deciding when discrimination has occurred). Socioeconomic disadvantage is *not* generally regarded as a suspect category. There are legal and fund-raising advantages to BHS saying “We are doing X because X will help ‘black and brown’ kids”: less so with “We are doing X to help socioeconomically disadvantaged kids.” Yet, the latter *might* be what is really needed here – it might be a more appropriate reaction to the data.
You also mentioned “Harlem Children’s Zone” and its emphasis on measurement. And you say: “You’d be hard pressed to find any evaluation of any small school program at BHS right now.”
Just anecdotally, I’ve heard Bill Gates speak in recent years about changes in is thinking about how to help schools since he first started trying. One idea he seems keen on, that seems to me in equal measures clever and promising, yet creepy and fraught with peril, is based on teacher peer review and mentoring in the context of observation. Put cameras in every classroom, on the students and on the teachers, at least quite often throughout the year. Then review these, with peers, with particular emphasis on the critiques offered by teachers with a good success rate.
The thrust of his gist, so to speak, was that there is a lot of lack of self-examination and accountability in teaching and that in his limited experience, when that problem is attack fairly directly, they returns on that investment tend to be higher than with many other approaches.
Hey, I found one example! Here’s Gates (this is a video):
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html
and skip to about 8:29 – 8:30. Quips such as “If you are low income, you have a higher chance of going to jail than of getting a higher degree.” By about 11:27 he starts asking about the variation in effectiveness of teachers. Another quip about a typical school: “In a teacher’s contract, it will specify a limit on how often the principle can come into the classroom [to observe] in a given year.” (Elsewhere in the video, while talking about the problem of malaria, he releases some mosquitos into the audience. Quite the showman.)
You wrote: “The achievement gap starts very young.” Didn’t catch the particular NPR report you mention but I’ve heard plenty of quite similar things. I don’t have a lot that I can say about that without being (even more) long-winded. Briefly, that helps make it clear that the problem BHS is attacking must also be attacked in the lower grades and so forth.
You wrote: “In Berkeley 8-10 years ago, many kids who needed resource were denied. I know because my kid was one of them. So the kids in high school now are that group. In Albany at that time, all a student needed was to be reading below grade level and they went to a reading class after school. In Berkeley you needed hours of testing and then they denied many kids. So BUSD is reaping what it sowed. That is another part of today’s situation.”
Like Jimi Hendrix said, “I can tell you had *your* fun.” What you describe sounds to me frustrating, broken, and all too plausible.
You wrote: “Science labs are for all BHS students, period.”
Well, we’re not talking about labs in general, we’re talking about some period 0 and 7 labs, right? And, the football program is also for all students, period, but the question is cui bono and how and what are the opportunity costs associated with modifying the program.
You wrote: “Many parents were opposed to the last two plans to address the achievement gap, but it is just possible that they were both terrible ideas.” You wrote that the implications made that parents of high achieving students “don’t care” about other students is a “divisive tactic.”
I am starting to believe you.
You wrote: “There has never been an open discussion of possible ways to address the achievement gap, just plans formulated by the principal and rubber stamped by the SGC with little or no input from parents; this happened this year and last year. Some people may argue with the plan in principle. The vast majority will see it as vague, political rhetoric with no scientific basis or data to back it up. For a fine review of this dynamic, please go to the BUSD website and read through these minutes:
http://www.berkeley.net/board-meeting-information/ ”
Director Issel sounds like a pretty sharp tack.
You write: “All BHS students need 3 lab sciences to graduate. Applications to UC’s recommend 4 lab sciences in their a-g credits. Struggling students, regular students and AP students all benefit from the extra time that labs afford.”
I’m a bit with Issel’s principle that schedules and class size should not necessarily be center stage while teacher performance sure ought to be. I guess I would really like to see some (probably never been taken) measurements of who benefits from the extra lab periods and in what numbers and just exactly what dollars are on the table, etc. I’ve heard conflicting anecdotal accounts about the labs.
Last thing:
I asked: “Are the opponents of the plan arguing that canceling the labs will make it significantly less likely that BHS students become well-grounded in the underlying science? If so, why?”
And you replied: “Because lab science requires lab time. Duh? (Maybe I misunderstood this question.)
OK – that’s quite enough from me. Good questions.”
Students require vitamin A, too, but that doesn’t mean a good priority would be to hand out carrots four times a day.
Elsewhere you speculated that wealthier students will make up for lost labs by hiring more tutors. Perhaps. Sounds plausible.
It also seems to me that motivated students of any socioeconomic class, who have done some hard work to prepare a bit, wouldn’t find it *that* hard to find outside opportunities in Berkeley or close by.
That aside, you have shifted my opinion:
On first reading, from the readily available information, the action plan sounded to me like a no-brainer. Now, I don’t agree with all your reasoning in what you wrote and we are still missing a lot of desirable facts BUT… you have made it sound a lot more plausible to me that a good reason to oppose canceling the labs is not because preserving the labs is vital, but because the cancellation would be in furtherance of a badly formed and poorly justified plan.
I think I’m tending towards your side, though I reserve the right to change my mind. Enough from me, too. Good answers.
The School Governance Council (SGC) meeting on Dec. 8 at which Principal Slemp asked for support for his vague plan was a disappointing discussion of the issues. The only members of the SGC willing to question the proposal were parents and they were essentially told to trust the teachers and Slemp’s proposal.
Rather than discussing what is currently being done to eliminate the achievement gap, and how available resources were being allocated, teachers (mostly from the small schools who are disproportionately represented on the SGC) stated that canceling science class would free up funds to close the achievement gap. However, no specifics were mentioned or referenced in Slemp’s broad policy proposal.
The argument was repeatedly made, without explanation, that supporting challenging science classes for ALL BHS students was equivalent to supporting widening the gap. In fact, one parent member brought up specific facts that resources at BHS that were effective in assisting low-performing students were being under-utilized. Her point was ignored. But it shouldn’t be.
Before a strong pillar of a BHS’ education is torn down (and I don’t think anyone disagrees that the BHS science department does a great job), the administration and especially the small schools should also explain the effectiveness of current programs and the current allocation of resources to the community. A lot is being done at BHS and this non-plan appears to be change for changes sake. For example, IB and AHA are graduating their first classes this year and perhaps BHS should evaluate how the small-school experiment is going before heading off on another experiment.
Thomas – too many questions here. but this one is essential:
I wrote: “Science labs are for all BHS students, period.”
You wrote: “Well, we’re not talking about labs in general, we’re talking about some period 0 and 7 labs, right?
No, we are talking about ALL science labs, as labs are scheduled either 0 or 7th period.
Scenario: You are a sophomore, you sign up for Chem, you get it 3rd (or whatever) period, plus you get assigned a lab either 0 or 7th period on one particular day. So instead of having Chem 5x week you have it 6x week. And if you have AP Chem you have an extra lab every other week, I think, something like that. And none of this is because science is better or more important, it is just harder to learn and has extra requirements from the UC system, and that system guides high school curriculum decisions all over CA.
And just by the by, science is where the jobs are, and science is what will save the planet. I’m just sayin’…
Roxanne: It *sounds* like you are describing an outcome wherein AP track students have to give up some electives to squeeze their lab time in during other periods, no? In any event, the fact that we don’t have the various scenarios authoritatively spelled out makes the action plan impossible to evaluate – another reason to be against it.
But what I really wanted to respond to is where you said: “And just by the by, science is where the jobs are, and science is what will save the planet. I’m just sayin’…”
Well….. um…. I’m not sure about that in two ways:
I’m less convinced than you that a solid science background is going to open up lots of opportunities for desirable jobs. That’s just not what I see in manufacturing or R&D. Science-driven industry produces a lot of jobs that you can qualify for with a trade-school degree but not quite so many for people doing creative, original work in science.
The reason why has to do with that “save the planet” stuff. I think that’s kinda BS and kinda not – in any event, people generally have the wrong idea about it:
Really amazing and unlikely breakthroughs in alternative energy, food production, etc. could save the planet but it is a serious gamble to rely on that. For one thing, the table stakes are very, very high – it costs a lot of money to pursue a line of research in those areas and, simultaneously, while a big breakthrough pays off most R&D attempts lose money and generate nothing but incremental improvements in knowledge (sometimes mixed with some environmental degradation as a bonus).
If you ask me, low-tech engineering plus cultural changes in lifestyle are what can “save the planet” in some broad sense. For example, I think a student who gains some experience running a computer controlled milling machine and doing some back-of-an-envelope mechanical engineering may have more to offer and be in a better position personally in years to come than one who, say, had some fun creating genetically altered bacteria. That first guy is in a good position to improvise and participate in regional manufacturing in support of regional ag and regional lifestyle change. That second guy is tracked for a highly, highly competitive world of a limited number of R&D seats – with a fallback of doing the grunt work running someone else’s highly dubious experiments. In that grunt-work outcome, within a decade, he’ll be up against trade-school grads.
We’ll see. (“just sayin’”
-t
[...] week about the debate over science and the achievement gap at Berkeley High School. There’s a stream of comments on that earlier post that are well worth reading, if you’re concerned about the [...]
Thomas, I think there are aspects of the BHS schedule you don’t fully understand. In some of the programs, notably the International High School, there are no electives until the final years. So there are no periods to give up to take some extra lab time.
If a student were to do that, then she or he would be giving up, for example, foreign language — another requirement for most students aiming at college.
The 0 and 7th periods are crucial precisely because there’s no extra time knocking around in the school schedule.
Lance, are you sure that that’s accurate? For example, you say that in BIHS there are no electives until senior year but the BIHS web site contradicts you. It seems from what BIHS says of itself (e.g., a student could pass on IB Art, Music and Economics to free up schedule.
I wonder if you aren’t conflating the requirements of the IB Diploma Program with “requirement(s) for most students aiming at college”?
-t
I said final years. There are no electives in freshman year, assuming the student needs to take a language. I think most program choices mean there are no true electives sophomore year as well.
One dumb thing is that I misread your earlier comment to say “final year” rather than “final years” so, indeed, the BIHS web site does *not* contradict you. My apologies. More on this below, though.
I’m not sure what you mean by “most program choices” and still wonder how much weight you are giving to the IB degree, which seems a bit off-mission to me.
By way of anecdote and perspective sharing: I went (as a scholarship “townie”) to a famous prep school in New England. The place was founded by T. Jefferson et al. The roster of impressive accomplishments among graduates is rather long. It produced at least two presidents and quite a large number of current big achievers. It has a long record of great AP test performance among students (in every area) and great college placements. (Of course, the college placement numbers are skewed severely by traditional lines of nepotism – e.g., legacy kids at this school are advantaged for Harvard, those from the sister school are advantaged for getting into Yale – but even discounting that and looking at the charity cases like me, the school does quite well.)
You can’t compare apples and oranges. A private school like that has a strong selection bias. They simply don’t face nearly as many of the problems that arise in dealing with woefully under-prepared students because they don’t admit them in the first place. That school I went to has been working to lower its barriers to entry but they still have the privilege of admitting only very promising students who look like they can “catch up”.
But when we’re talking about clearly college-tracked BHS students, it’s not so apples and oranges: those are *mostly* going to be well prepared, eager, self-starters. So the question about when labs get scheduled over four years as it pertains to those high-achievers arises, I think it’s OK to compare a bit to my prep school.
At that prep school, the main lab courses were very much a junior and senior year thing. And, with a curious echo of the action plan, there was a heavy (though unevenly applied) emphasis on counseling and advising in all years.
That school, like BHS, tried hard to offer various “tracks” to let students double down on their interests – you could pick an academic line to pursue. Socially, it divided students into “clusters” (close to but not the same as “small schools”). It divided clusters into “houses”, like BIHS. One difference was that same-cluster or same-house affiliations did not mean “same academic track”, at least not formally. The small-community building was orthogonal to which classes people enrolled in. In contrast to a BIHS “house”, a prep school house represented a diversity of academic tracks.
I’m skeptical of claims that already high achieving students are seriously harmed by squeezing their labs into the last two years, perhaps giving up some other elective – especially in Berkeley where there is a wealth of outside-school opportunities. If that worked well at the snooty prep school, there’s no obvious reason it shouldn’t also work at BHS.
If I were going to sum up my impression in the most cynical terms my account would probably include that: On the one hand there are the low achievers (largely underclass, highly correlated with race) where BHS is called upon to act in loco parentis and on the other hand there are the high achievers (largely privileged, highly correlated with race) where, to provide accelerated opportunity, BHS is called upon to act in loco parentis. The advocates of each side are currently engaged in duking it out in a fight over budget. Neither side has any obvious claim to a theory of effective and efficient high school education – they’ve only respective budget territory. Something will give/change to break the impasse but the outcome will be fairly random.
A few points. First, the issue is science labs for all BHS students, not just those taking AP courses. At the moment, the only science labs are in the extra periods. So changing the schedule either reduces the amount of science instruction — not just AP science instruction — or it requires all students to forgo some other course in order to take science.
Second, I’m not sure how old you are Thomas, but I’m finding it hard to extrapolate from my high school experience in the 1970s to high school today. I took three AP exams — Calculus, Physics and Music — and I hardly encountered anyone else who took that many, even when I went to my elite, ridiculously competitive university. Today, it’s very common for high school students to take two or three times that many AP exams.
If BHS is going to continue to serve the entire community, it needs to allow students the choice to take a considerable number of AP (or IB) exams, which means they can’t all be packed into the final two years.
But to reiterate my first point, I think it’s a red herring to portray the debate over scheduling as rich versus poor, or black versus white, or equity versus privilege. One of the things BHS seems to do well at for all students is teach science. That’s what is endangered.
Lance, I feel like I’m possibly a bit past the point of tedium and posting too much here so please forgive me and feel free to take a last word in this thread but….
To answer your question, if you went to HS in the 70s then it sounds like I’m around 10 or so years less long in the tooth (I’m class of ’84).
I think you’ve answered one of my questions, though. You write: “to serve the entire community, it needs to allow students the choice to take a considerable number of AP (or IB) exams, which means they can’t all be packed into the final two years.”
I earlier asked if objections to the action plan were based on the notion that it is *in principle* wrong to redirect resources from the highest achieving students to the stragglers. I think you are saying, “Yes, that is, *in principle*, wrong.” I disagree insofar as while I think students should have a chance to prepare for all those AP exams, I don’t think the BHS budget is necessarily obligated to provide all of that opportunity. I’ll unpack that opinion below:
It seems to me that you yourself are framing this as a rich v. poor, black v. white question even while insisting that you are not. Should not the most essential mission of BHS be to improve median performance, minimize average variation to the negative side of that median, and equip high achievers to go further using external resources? At least under conditions of budget challenge?
School funding taxes aren’t a tuition. It’s not like a prep school in that a parent paying a lot of taxes doesn’t get to say, necessarily, “The instruction my kid got wasn’t worth that much.” In California and especially in Berkeley education funding is by design, progressive taxation to fund a public utility from whom, ideally, each citizen benefits according to need. We don’t concentrate fire-fighting resources based on relative property values – we pay-in to fire-fighting capacity based on ability and consume by property-value-insensitive need, at least ideally. I’m not sure why BHS should be different: the generally better off parents of high achieving students should, indeed, expect to be subsidizing the education of lower achieving students. The better off parents should not expect every buck of their tax dollars to go towards maximizing the resources dedicated to their kids, at the expense of lower achieving kids.
Damn, it’s not fair of me and it’s generally very hard for me to relate. I *don’t* have a kid in BHS. It’s really easy for me to armchair but I will not hesitate to insist that my perspective is quite limited. I have what I think are some good thoughts but I would be lying if I didn’t offer you considerable deference on these issues – it’s just hard to offer my slight-remove perspective on the scene without seeming harsh. So I hope you don’t take the things I’m saying too antagonistically.
Conversely, it’s damn hard for current student parents to participate in a balanced way in that their primary stake is short-term, but the system decisions on the table are longer term. In a sense (simplifying, but with a kernel of truth), you are advocating for what happens this year and next and maybe the year after … but also for a vague “similar situation” parents in the years subsequent. It’s hard to trust your judgment given your short-term concerns. Current BHS parents are likely to be biased towards specific current students and a bit out of whack vis a vis other current students and future students in general
You say BHS seems to teach science well. Well, eh, what does that mean, exactly? Most of the really good scientists and engineers I’ve met over the years got precious little out of classrooms beyond the basic 3Rs and some counseling and advising by faculty who adopted them as mentors. There’s only so much that can be taught by lecture and exercise, demonstration and lab…. after that, you are either a self-learner or not. The idea of BHS concentrating on “boring”, non-advanced fundamentals, doubling down on advising towards meeting basic achievement goals, well … on paper that still sounds very good (although Roxanne has mostly convinced me the current action plan is ill-advised).
Maybe this is a good strategy:
1) Shoot down the action plan.
Rationale: It is poorly thought out and no persuasive justification offered.
2) Encourage the principal to resign.
Rationale: divisive, ineffective.
3) Resist (noting some data in the open letter BS recently published) any budget increases for BHS not tied to population or inflation increases.
Rationale: money is not the main problem.
4) Kill “small schools”.
Rationale: factionalized faculty plus the mistake of tying socialization of students to their choice of curriculum track.
5) Implement a stronger advising program, and clusters / houses there.
Rationale: Yes, implement community building and one-on-one guidance – just don’t tie it to curriculum choices. Encourage diversity within the institution-defined, artificial, small communities: pick memberships randomly. Same-cluster / same-house students should have “forced association” in academic counseling contexts, not in curriculum choices.
6) Develop outside-the-school-system educational opportunities.
Examples: Develop more opportunities for BHS kids to find stuff to do at Cal, in local businesses, at projects like The Crucible, etc. Find (outside the school system budget) civic money for things like mentoring programs, museum and library access, trips, etc.
Rationale: No one bureaucracy is likely to manage the problem… a competitive field of education providers works better. Also, it’s better to give students the opportunity to go as far as they can in whatever direction they like than to try to condense and present their options in the finite curriculum of a single school. Encourage BHS kids to go out and explore, and take risks. Encourage the surrounding institutions to join the community more than they do and create opportunity.
7) Focus on testing and other forms of credentialing at BHS, accounting for students who get “outside education”:
Rationale: Find (better) ways to measure and credit student achievements outside of BHS’s domain, for two reasons: (a) to formalize outside accomplishments in ways that make sense to college admission boards; (b) to provide incentive to HS students to go seek out outside opportunities.
I would not be able to imagine, much less understand, how Berkeley High operates unless I had experienced it over 8 years of my children being there. Right now my younger son is taking Honors Anatomy. His class meets one period each day and the labs are twice a week during zero period. It simply would not be possible to offer this class if labs are eliminated. The same holds true for all the science classes.
Like many issues that pop up with the current BHS administration, all is not as it seems. This sudden decision to eliminate science labs smacks of retribution to the science department, since some of the teachers publicly spoke out about grade tampering and the consequences of reduced instructional minutes in various proposed redesigns. (I won’t even go into the numerous flaws in that trimester proposal–why copy something that only 4 schools in California follow and why did no one from BHS interview the southern California school that switched back to semesters after 7 years on trimesters?). Science teacher work loads would increase immensely due to the way their schedule operates, if 0/7 period science labs were eliminated, and 5 science teachers would lose their jobs.
Eliminating science labs strikes me as a disingenuous way to achieve the goals of BayCES, the consulting group that siphons hundreds of thousands of dollars from BUSD each year. They state in their business plan that they will work to eliminate AP courses at Berkeley High, although there will be community opposition. They also state that they will do lots of community legwork to support their ‘equity’ plans. Hence the 2020 Vision Plan, which politicizes education rather than strengthens it.
My own children will not be affected by all the proposals. But who wants to live in a place where kids don’t have basic literacy or numeracy skills, and there seems to be a rabid anti-intellectual climate in education circles? Not me. As for the argument over resource allocation, I don’t know one parent who is fighting to reduce the class size in AP courses, which is over 40 in some cases, because we’re all in agreement that struggling kids need smaller classes. So right now the average class size in the small schools is 24 and in Academic Choice it’s 32. The high school has already handed over lots of resources to kids who have greater needs, and that does seem to be a reasonable course. The rub is that it appears those resources have been thoroughly wasted, with a few exceptions. Look at the zeal with which some people embrace IMP math, even though proficiency has now hit zero in IMP math 3.
UC/CSU/California lab requirements DO NOT require a separate lab period. Lab sciences are taught all over California without extra lab time outside of the normal class period. See my comment here for more details: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2009/12/14/science-at-bhs-an-open-letter/
I did not say separate science labs were a UC requirement. I am aware of UC a-g course requirements, unfortunately, because Berkeley High has flubbed submission of courses to UC repeatedly, to the detriment of hundreds of students.
My comment refers to the fact that there’s no way the students can master the material if the anatomy science labs are eliminated. This holds true for my kids’ experience with advanced biology and AP chem as well as anatomy. This is their opinion, not mine. Maybe your students are smarter than my kids and they can absorb more information in less time. Mine can’t. Many kids can’t…like, say, the struggling kids that are supposedly the beneficiaries of all these schemes. I fail to see how struggling students in science classes will gain anything by the elimination of science labs.
The BSEP measure was designed to cover items such as science labs. BUSD has much more money per student than other school districts thanks to BSEP. Those monies are earmarked precisely for items such as science labs, music and art as well as class size reduction. They are not earmarked for pet projects of the high school principal such as ‘equity classes.’ Bottom line? Elimination of science labs will further weaken the BHS science program and make it harder for the kids who need the most help academically. And what do kids get for that loss? Some nebulous ‘equity’ class with a yet-to-be-determined curriculum that will no doubt be developed by BayCES to the tune of $1,000 a day in consulting fees.
Maureen stated: “My comment refers to the fact that there’s no way the students can master the material if the anatomy science labs are eliminated.”
Are you saying that all over California other schools are putting students through anatomy who do not master the material? All over California (and the nation) students complete anatomy, honors, and AP classes without extra lab periods.
Yes, students do better when you give them more time. But please don’t argue that the extra time is NEEDED for students to succeed.
I would agree that giving more time to AP and Honors classes will help a broader range of students to succeed in these classes. But, why limit it to science? If an AP history class can spend time during a “lab” period acting out skits historic events, the quality of their education and their success rates will increase. AP English? AP Art?
It would not surprise me to learn that California schools are putting students through science classes who are not mastering the material. Cal professors and grad student TA’s certainly believe it. All over California and across the nation many other schools also have separate science labs. But what other schools do is never the point at Berkeley High. Other school districts do not fund science labs the way Berkeley does. Our BSEP measure pays for those labs and public consensus favors funding those labs over some equity class. Please don’t argue that it’s sound education policy to replace science labs with undefined ‘equity’ classes as a way to help struggling students increase their academic skills.
I’m writing an article for the Berkeley Daily Planet on the science labs controversy at BHS. In preparation, I’ve learned from everything you all have been saying.
I’ve also interviewed a number of BHS science teachers, Superintendent Bill Huyett, others at BUSD, and a few of you who have been involved for a long time in making the high school a more effective and equitable learning environment. (Thank you for that!)
The article should appear in this week’s issue of the Planet. I look forward to ongoing discussions here at Berkeleyside and elsewhere.
Raymond Barglow
http://www.berkeleytutors.net
It would be easy to find out if extra lab time is needed by comparing the AP scores for schools without the extra periods with those for schools with the extra period.
The argument of other classes not having extra time is beside the point. AP calculus does not have labs and humanities classes do not have labs because they don’t need them. Students can read, research and study history, languages and mathematics at home. But dissection, exothermal reactions and ballistics tests cannot (hopefully) be done at home. As for whether eliminating science labs is a good idea, I suggest interested parties look at the difficulty that academia, industry and government agencies are having with hiring qualified minorities. That’s because minority students already have less access to science education than other student groups. Why would Berkeley of all places deny minorities a rich science curriculum? And college admissions officers look very favorably on Berkeley High School in part because of their rigorous science program. It’s very sad to think that anyone would back further weakening of a formerly great science program for high schoolers from all backgrounds. And to do this in the name of equity is beyond belief.
Chris, you wrote: “It would be easy to find out if extra lab time is needed by comparing the AP scores for schools without the extra periods with those for schools with the extra period.”
I don’t think it would be easy. What variables are you controlling for and what variables are you measuring?
[...] last night board’s meeting. Read it here. Read previous Berkeleyside coverage of the issue here, here [...]
Cutting off the legs of white children does not make black kids taller, but I do understand that it makes Liberals feel better to say that at least there will be less gap between the two. See Berkeley High: How to Achieve Racial Equality in Schools
way to go, people.
who needs science anyway?
NBA player earns more than PhD, right?
And we can always import some wiz kids from China.
I came across this issue in the Berkeley City news summary site. I have 3 children, the youngest now in college, so in some ways this issue has no direct impact on my family (though I still pay hefty Berkeley taxes). The youngest was our only BHS student as we lived in El Cerrito when our oldest started high school and the middle one went to St Mary’s HS. I have volunteered in my kids’ classes since they were in preschool, including a stint as a writing coach in a small school at BHS. Throughout the past almost 30 years, I have been a strong advocate for, and volunteer with, the students who struggle with even basic math and reading skills. Our middle child is the only one who might potentially end up in a strongly science-related career, and at the time she was in HS, St. Mary’s science program did not offer as many options as either El Cerrito or Berkeley High Schools, so perhaps this could be seen as supporting Mr. Lord’s premise that the science labs need not occur in “extra” periods (El Cerrito went to a block scheduling scheme in our oldest’s senior year, theoretically in part to allow “extra” time for lab work – students took 3 classes per semester, each for 90 minutes per day; not sure how that has continued to work out since there were understandably bumps in its implementation). However, El Cerrito also had many activities, including student gov’t and sports, that occurred during before- and after-school times.
Our BHS student took the minimum number of science courses needed for a-g req’ts. She found, to her surprise, that she actually enjoyed them, and that she learned a lot as well (she’s more of a language arts/history person – and I could go on and on about the minimal opportunities for students who like these subjects to take anything resembling challenging courses because of concerns about widening the achievement gap, at all 3 high schools). The labs, in addition to being part of the req’t of the course for UC admission, definitely helped the information from the text “stick” for her and for her classmates. And to the best of my recollection, these were not fancy labs. (Also, just to refute the suggestion that there are plenty of community options for motivated students to get the same benefits they receive from the school labs – not so much. Our oldest participated in a limited (~20 students from ECHS and Kennedy High combined) program – after school hours – through the USDA in Albany. To the best of my knowledge, this is not available to students at BHS or St. Mary’s, and may not even still exist. Taking classes at Cal (we looked into this for humanities courses while at BHS) requires: a) finding a course that the student needs/wants to take and is qualified for; b) at a time the student can go; c) that the professor is willing to allow the student into; AND d) paying 4 units’ tuition. Our older kids did the whole LHS thing as far as it went, up through being “explainers” in the labs on weekends; again, not the same as getting hands-on science experience at school. Maybe Mr. Lord could elaborate more on what options he had in mind.)
As someone who studied science in college (though that is not how I am currently employed), one of the major benefits I have seen from the lab class experiences of our kids and their friends, is that, whether or not they go on to study science in college, they have a better understanding of how experiments are done, what factors can influence the results, etc. All of this helps make them better-informed citizens in a world where science plays a very important role in many issues they will be asked to decide about. For students (of all colors and socio-economic backgrounds), these classes can be an introduction to something that may become a life-long passion. It would be a shame to cut back on such an important area. I hope that the school board and Mr. Slemp will consider this carefully. There are already too few options for students to get a hands-on experience in high school. The counseling and advising could take place outside of regular school hours, or during what used to be the mostly waste-of-time freshman seminar. Please don’t cut the science labs.
Susan, I wish to respond to a couple of things. One is where you say:
“Also, just to refute the suggestion that there are plenty of community options for motivated students to get the same benefits they receive from the school labs – not so much. Our oldest participated in a limited (~20 students from ECHS and Kennedy High combined) program – after school hours – through the USDA in Albany. To the best of my knowledge, this is not available to students at BHS or St. Mary’s, and may not even still exist. Taking classes at Cal (we looked into this for humanities courses while at BHS) requires: [....]”
That is *not* what I mean by “community options”. I mean kids, one at a time, each in an ad hoc way, tromping up the hill and using the libraries and, more importantly, knocking on doors and looking for opportunities and minimum wage work. There are hard but very surmountable challenges on all three sides here: students need to learn and practice gumption, BHS academic advisers need to grease wheels and push students out in that direction, UCB and LBL need to react gracefully to the influx. Sounds “impossible” yet that’s a pattern that has worked for decades at certain east coast institutions. Students don’t walk away from such experiences with credentials – they walk away able to speak for themselves in impressive ways and *perhaps* in some cases with letters from highly credentialed colleagues. They get the gold.
One east-coast case I know of from the ’80s (not so long ago) was a high school student who had blown past his curriculum into the neighborhood of dropping out. He was “taken in” by faculty and staff researchers at a nearby university. By the 1990s, he was such a powerhouse of a software engineer that the web browser you are using today to read this message would probably be nowhere near as capable as it is without his leadership in the project to develop the first commercially successful web browser.
The thing is, not that long ago, such stories were not all that uncommon. Yes, the higher-ed institutions can make formal programs that sanctify “graduates” of their programs with formal certificates but really that’s pomp and circumstance surrounding the real deal which is always ad hoc, messy, and unique. Kick the high-achieving kids out the door and up the hill early and often. Sympathize when they meet with cold or obnoxious rejection and kick them back up the next day. Absolute worst case – which is not so bad – most of the interesting library stacks up there are open to the public — but the high achievers can do far better than that if they start seeking more interactive opportunities. There are also less credential-centric but still valuable opportunities, such as The Crucible in Oakland.
You wrote: “Maybe Mr. Lord could elaborate more on what options he had in mind.”
Some of which I’ve done above. Don’t focus on grades and certificates. Focus on experience and social ability and the student’s ability to articulate their experience, social ability, and personal goals. A minimum wage job washing test tubes at Bayer is probably worth more to a high achieving student than extra lab periods if the minimum wage job includes enough slack and opportunity to interact with the real scientists there.
It would be anathema to my point to try to give some formula like “have your kid do a then b then c” because a, b, and c are different for every kid and different from year to year. And yes, the host organizations i’m nominating (ucb, lbl, bayer, etc.) are not always (probably less than half the time) going to receive an approach gracelessly and unhelpfully. But push in that direction. It works. I’ve seen it work for quite a large number of people in multiple cities. I’ve seen evidence of it working repeatedly over decades – multiple generations. That’s how it works. Science and engineering works by apprenticeship, not curriculum – period.
All this AP test crap and similar testing is a bunch of rubbish.
As a parent of a 1st grader in BUSD, all I can say is I hope this strange “cultural revolution” style of school management at BHS changes by the time my daughter attends BHS. You don’t correct inequity this way. For the past year and a half I have had the opportunity to see first hand that a huge factor in the achievement gap originates with each child’s family/home situation. I’ve been to many school events and it is largely the same parents one sees again and again. Some parents never show up for any of the school events I’ve been to, regardless if it is on a weekend, evening or during the day.
In my daughter’s class, the same child is absent almost every Monday I’ve been there volunteering. The same kids come to school with their take-home folders clearly not looked through–the side that says “keep at home” that has announcements, completed schoolwork and permission slips hasn’t been touched. The same kids don’t bring their folders back to school. The same kids have their reading homework sheets sent back to school blank.
Parent involvement is a huge predictor of children’s success at school and you can already see in the 1st grade many kids who are going to have a rough time in their school careers because of the complete absence of parental involvement or care in the child’s school career. How on earth is BUSD or BHS supposed to address this factor? This is a huge, unacknowledged factor and I’m tired of people pretending it is not an issue.
BTW, there’s a petition regarding the BHS Science proposal here: http://bit.ly/8z9Ieq .
Oh, and you may want to read up on the Chinese Cultural Revoloution, because it sounds eerily similar to the thought processes at play in this misguided decision:
From Wikipedia (http://bit.ly/5sb3b2):
“Elsewhere, the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution also brought the education system to a virtual halt. The university entrance exams were cancelled during this period, not to be restored by Deng Xiaoping until 1979. Many intellectuals were sent to rural labour camps, and many of those who survived left China shortly after the revolution ended. Many survivors and observers suggest that almost anyone with skills over that of the average person was made the target of political “struggle” in some way. According to most Western observers as well as followers of Deng Xiaoping, this led to almost an entire generation of inadequately educated individuals. However, this varies depending on the region, and the measurement of literacy did not resurface until the 1980s.[21]“
This science lab elimination is part of a long-term plan to kill academic achievement in the name of equity (notice how people are using the phrase “the equity gap” now instead of “the achievement gap?”) Money currently spent on equity consultants at Berkeley High (and funded partially through a $5M Dept of Ed grant that was sleazily submitted prior to school board approval and calls for the principal to spend half his time “visioning”) could be used for summer school programs for middle school kids who are falling behind. A strong summer school curriculum would enable these students to take advantage of strong science classes in high school. Currently BUSD has no summer school programs that effectively help struggling students in middle school. Why isn’t the Berkeley school board directing resources to this need? It’s pitiful, especially since the Oak Grove school district in San Jose recently reported a 20% increase in math scores after their 8th grade students attended algebra classes during the summer before high school. Berkeley High kids in the small school CP Academy have attained ZERO proficiency in math on the most recent California tests, yet Berkeley High administrators characterize this information as “low-stakes” and continue to force students into the very math program (IMP) that has produced such dismal results. In fact, academic proficiency at Berkeley High has decreased alarmingly every year during the tenure of the current principal and his equity consultants. Berkeley School Board doesn’t seem to care. Yet the Dept of Ed grant proposal written by BayCES, the equity consultants, states they will increase proficiency rates by 17%. Well, I guess that’s easy to do if you start at zero. And there will be no accountability when BayCES and Berkeley High do not achieve that stated goal. It’s a very sad situation when school administrators, school district personnel, school board members and teacher union officers are playing politics instead of looking at education in a rational way. Just take a look at the BayCES business plan, which states they hope to eliminate AP classes at Berkeley High but must plan to fight community resistance–hence the ridiculous 2020 Vision Plan that our local politicians have all signed on for. (Read the minutes of their planning meetings for real eye-opener comments about the need for classes on white privilege in middle schools instead of academic excellence). So BayCES will get its way. No more AP science classes at Berkeley High, but it will be done deceptively. Just eliminate the labs and still call the classes AP, even over the protests of the science teachers. So kids will get high grades (let’s not forget the transcript changing scandal, something other school districts have fired principals for), they’ll get accepted into colleges, and they’ll fall flat on their faces. And Berkeley High administrators will claim fantastic success. Evaluation and academic achievement are dirty words in Berkeley schools, and those of us who believe in academic achievement are called privileged elitists (oh, the irony of Rick Ayers, yes brother of Bill, doing the name-calling from his ivory tower at Cal’s School of Education–guess he’ll get a job at BayCES when he finishes his PhD).
Very early on in this discussion on Berkeleyside I asked whether or not the resistance to the plan was based on a belief that it is *in principle* wrong to redirect finite resources from programs that mainly benefit high achieving students to those who are struggling. I am beginning to get the impression that the answer is “yes, that is the source of much of the resistance”. I have to say, that makes me rather uncomfortable about the opposition to the plan.
Alicia writes what seems to me to be two contradictory statements: “You don’t correct inequity this way. For the past year and a half I have had the opportunity to see first hand that a huge factor in the achievement gap originates with each child’s family/home situation.”
Where I went to school the lesson was gradually learned, and is still being learned, that the best way a school can help overcome deficits in the “family/home situation” is with one on one academic advisers. This does place the school in loco parentis to a certain degree but it pays off. Many are the ultimately high achieving college graduates who struggled and rose up from a problematic home life precisely because that one on one attention was available from the school. Students at all levels of achievement tend to benefit from that kind of mentorship. My understanding that funding such advising is one of the reasons the principle is trying to reallocate funds. In other words, this *is* the way you close an achievement gap that arises from differences in home life.
Alicia also compares the situation to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I’m sorry to be so blunt but the comparison is shockingly offensive and unjustified. The situation in BHS is one of a finite budget, allocated with a high priority of getting all students to a certain base goal level of achievement. The current disbursement of that budget is lopsided, leaving behind underclass students, African American students, and to a lesser extent Hispanic students. Nobody has offered any convincing argument that compressing lab time into the regular schedule will significantly harm high achieving students. The redirection of that budget may very well help the underachieving students. What, exactly, in this situation would Alicia compare to the totalitarian atrocities of the Chinese Cultural Revolution?
Maureen Burke remarks “This science lab elimination is part of a long-term plan to kill academic achievement in the name of equity.”
I must ask: Whom is being accused of having and masterminding such a nefarious plan? There is a very, very serious accusation being made there. Are we to imagine a kind of star chamber of sneaky outside agitators who are hell bent on keep rich kids, Asian kids, and White kids dumb? Will there next move be to seek ways to keep those kids from learning things outside of BHS? What is the motive for this nefarious plot? Cui bono?
Ms. Burke makes a vague accusation that for the cost of equity consultants, BUSD could fund a summer school. Can we please see some evidence of this claim? It seems rather implausible on its surface. BayCES is not obviously good, I agree with that. Their arrangement with BUSD was initially funded by the Gate’s foundation which has since declined to renew that funding, probably because the Gate’s foundation was dissatisfied overall with the results of small school efforts. Yet, currently, if I have the news right, BayCES is only slated to get something like $173/yr from BUSD (and BayCES has had some successes). Is it not something in that ballpark? $173K won’t come close to funding an extra lab period, nevermind a summer school. It’s a very valid question whether or not the money on BayCES is well spent – but that question is abused in this context by Ms. Burke.
Ms. Burke insults us skeptics of the opposition by saying: “Evaluation and academic achievement are dirty words in Berkeley schools, and those of us who believe in academic achievement are called privileged elitists”
I am withholding judgment so far on whether to accuse Ms. Burke of being a privileged elitist with an unjustified sense of entitlement but I think the question does arise given the way she frames the issues here:
Does not the question boil down, schematically, to something like this: Given $1 which may be spent towards things such as science labs vs spending that $1 on something like academic advising, which is the right choice? Of course we would all like $1 spent on each but we have but $1, not $2 – so making a painful choice is a circumstance forced upon us.
It seems to me that BHS has a baseline achievement goal which is the highest priority: all students should achieve that baseline. The $1 is better spent on programs that bring us closer to that baseline goal.
What increasingly galls me is this notion that BHS itself is solely responsible for the advancement of higher achieving students. If BHS were situated in a cultural and scientific wasteland, with no other opportunities around, I could understand that attitude. Yet, BHS is not so situated. Berkeley is blessed to be one of the culturally and scientifically richest places in the world. A high achieving student who wants to pass an AP test makes a very poor excuse for not working effectively towards that goal if the only excuse they offer is that the HS didn’t happen to offer quite the right courses.
It is definitely harder – but also probably better – for serious, high achieving students to dip into and take advantage of the environment in town. And, no, I don’t think it is automatic that each can go attach themselves to UCB, LBL, or a local high tech firm – spend free time in libraries – and advance themselves that way. It’s hard and those other institutions aren’t yet set up to automatically help but that is the better direction to go.
Meanwhile, reading comments like Alicia’s and Ms. Burke’s, I begin to understand where BayCES is coming from in their direct assault on institutionalized racism and classism in essential schools.
@Thomas, I am comparing the ethic in the Cultural Revolution that no-one should be better than average, which is what this all seems to be about. I haven’t seen you suggest cutting the BHS sports programs. While nice to have, I see little contribution to academic success from sports while conversely there is a lot of value in science to academic success. As a parent of children in the public schools, I suggest you volunteer in a public school if you want to help students who are underserved. It might also give you some firsthand insight with which to base your much espoused views.
I can tell you without much doubt that the public school my daughter goes to has a lot of services being offered to the underserved, but it won’t go far unless their parents care to be involved every step of the way.
The $173k/yr for 5 years that BayCES is slated to receive is from the $5 million Dept of Ed grant that they wrote and submitted without school board approval earlier this year. They receive additional consulting fees from other BUSD schools and local organizations. There is disagreement over whether the grant will actually cost BUSD $4 million or whether it is neutral. And yes, BayCES went through the $1 million Gates Foundation grant as well as additional monies to cover their $1,000/day coaching fees.
Since that $173K/yr is already there, all the more reason to not grab money earmarked for science labs.
The argument is not over funding struggling students more than those doing well (look at class sizes in small schools and remedial programs compared to Academic Choice/BIHS, whose kids have at least 20% larger class sizes); it is over squandering the money taken from proven and effective academic programs to fund programs that have a mixed track record at best. Oak Grove School District in San Jose identified mastery of algebra as a critical element in student success, so they developed their summer school program based on that fact. If BUSD implemented a program based on actual evidence that it worked, everyone would support it.
As for internship programs, Bayer already has a joint effort in place at Berkeley High with the Biotech Academy, specifically for low-income students. Who knows if Bayer will continue this if science labs are cut? And LBL has a summer internship program, HSSPP, for students interested in science who have completed at least 2 years of science classes, but given that an LBL scientist wrote in defense of maintaining science labs, maybe LBL will rethink offering this program to Berkeley High kids.
Alicia,
I think that in your comparison you do not accurately summarize the ethic of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and you do not accurately summarize the principal’s plan. You are making an obscene equivocation. I’ve met people who fled the Cultural Revolution. You are really not helping your case by trying to draw those bogus lines. Please drop that bit of rhetoric and let’s continue civilly by focusing on your logic:
You say that the BHS plan is based on “no-one should be better than average.” Do you realize that “average” has somewhere between little and nothing to do with what we are talking about here? At least in the sense you are using the term? There is a baseline of performance against which students are being measured, not an average. This isn’t grading on a curve – this is about a notion of what competencies amount to a basic education. We have a lot of students below that competency and the demographics of those underachievers indicate a disproportionate representation along economic class and racial lines.
Cutting sports programs is an interesting suggestion. Just as there are lots of opportunities in Berkeley for advanced science or humanities achievement, there are ample opportunities for athletic achievement. So, please, by all means: what part of which athletic programs do you propose to put on the table here and what do you think the cost savings will be? I’m quite open minded about that option I just have no evidence that there’s something to cut there.
Regarding your incitement that I should volunteer: I agree. Barring financial barriers or relocation I will hopefully appear in that way for the start of fall 2010 school year (sooner if I get really lucky).
Finally, yes – parent involvement is obviously vital. One *potentially* nice thing about the principal’s plan of having academic advisers for every student is that an adviser can reach out to and also be a contact point for parents. There’s a semi-famous fellow in Pittsburgh PA who started a school and not only rescued a lot of kids but propelled many to greatness. He got a similar program going in the projects in SF. One of his anecdotes concerns getting parents to show up for the art gallery showings of their kids works. Because of the very tight, one-on-one relationships with students he went so far as calling up parents saying “So, you’re coming right? Oh, you want to but can’t? No problem… we have a van. We’ll be there to pick you up at 7PM….” — that kind of thing. Basically dragging parents into the system feet first, if necessary. And it works. But you need to pay people to work it.
The proposed advisory program for Berkeley High will not provide one-on-one relationships between teachers and students. Teacher student loads would increase from about 140 students to 160 students. And there are not enough classrooms to support such small classes at Berkeley High at any rate, since the Measure AA $116 million bond money designated specifically for classrooms at Berkeley High has all been spent and there are now fewer classrooms than there were before we all voted for the 2000 bond measure. We were promised yearly audits of those bond monies. Didn’t get them. Now BUSD intends to float another bond issue for, guess what? Classrooms at Berkeley High. So I see the $555 BSEP line item on my property tax bill that I assumed would continue to fund science labs and is now in question, and I see the bond measures for which we’ll pay into the foreseeable future, and I see the amount of money BUSD wastes, and I say fuggitaboutit. Berkeley residents already paid for classrooms at Berkeley High and they didn’t happen. No way we should be billed twice, given that there is no real oversight and no accountability and no transparency. It’s a very sad day when you have to file public record act requests to obtain basic information out of your own public school district.
Thomas L, you certainly seem “engaged” on this topic, and have a lot of strong insights on the problems involved. My question is this:
“The current disbursement of that budget is lopsided, leaving behind underclass students, African American students, and to a lesser extent Hispanic students.”
Where did you come up with this data?
Your other comment states:
“It seems to me that BHS has a baseline achievement goal which is the highest priority: all students should achieve that baseline. The $1 is better spent on programs that bring us closer to that baseline goal.”
It seems to me that your basic premise is that social engineering is a good thing. Namely, we should focus our efforts on achieving equal performance, as opposed to equal opportunity. My problem with that logic is that it imposes an artificial standard that is impossible to achieve and simply leads to the kind of gamesmanship we are seeing now.
IMO one simple solution is to offer everyone the option to succeed and meet the baseline goal you mention. If they fail to avail themselves of such option, I don’t see where it serves any purpose to reduce the options of those who do want to succeed, and in fact are trying to make as good a use of the facilities as they can. I don’t agree with the notion that simply b/c a few bright programmers were kicked out of school early but were still successful is a model for other scientific disciplines. Having graduated from Caltech, I can testify firsthand to the difference in knowledge sets required for good performance in something like CS compared to say basic Chemistry.
So at this point I am in the camp that thinks that there has been no showing that the current programs are inadequate to serve underachieving students. In this respect the fact that there is still an achievement gap does not tell me one way or the other if such programs are effective. Let’s look at some real data, like the capacity of the programs, the number of kids in such programs that attend, the number that could attend but don’t, the class attendance rate for enrollees, their achievement rate, etc., before concluding that robbing Peter to pay Paul makes sense.
Thanks for reading, I enjoy your commentaries.
Ms. Gross,
You asked ““The current disbursement of that budget is lopsided, leaving behind underclass students, African American students, and to a lesser extent Hispanic students.” / Where did you come up with this data?”
I came to that opinion mainly from two sources. One is the link that Roxanne gives above, which I’ll repeat here:
http://api.cde.ca.gov/AcntRpt2009/2009APRSchAYPChart.aspx?allcds=01611430131177
Under-achievement at BHS is disproportionately a phenomenon of underclass, African-American, and to a lesser extent Hispanic students. Note that we’re not talking about failure to achieve at the highest levels, we’re talking about failure to achieve at a baseline of desired competency. I conclude from that that systemically, these groups are under-served. I don’t conclude “it’s all BHS’ fault” because obviously there are systemic problems in the larger society. Still, BHS’ highest priority goal, it seems to me, is aim at getting all students up to that baseline of achievement.
The other way I reach that conclusion is by reading the principals introduction to the plan. One cornerstone of his plan is simply making sure that all students are “known” to the faculty as opposed to simply passing through, achieving poorly, in relative anonymity and without intervention. This seems to me like a real problem and the right direction for a real solution to how BHS can begin to do its part of addressing the systematic failure to adequately serve underclass and some minority students.
You write: “It seems to me that your basic premise is that social engineering is a good thing.”
Well, to paraphrase the old joke, “We’ve already established that dear, we’re only quibbling over price.” That is to say that BHS has certain goals by charter – i.e., base competence for all students. It has a finite budget. It has a menu of ways to try to achieve the goal using the budget. It’s social engineering if we don’t ding the science labs. It’s social engineering if we do ding the science labs. There is nothing that can be done about this issue, one way or the other, that is not social engineering.
You write: “Namely, we should focus our efforts on achieving equal performance, as opposed to equal opportunity.”
As nearly as I can tell, nobody on either side is trying to focus on achieving equal performance. Period. That seems to be the biggest myth surrounding this whole flap. It’s not equal performance that is the primary goal but, rather, establishing a baseline of performance which, ideally, all students reach. That a subset of students can and will go far beyond that baseline is not the problem – it’s a good thing. That a large number of students, selected largely along class and race lines, fall below that baseline is the real problem.
You write: “IMO one simple solution is to offer everyone the option to succeed and meet the baseline goal you mention. If they fail to avail themselves of such option, I don’t see where it serves any purpose to reduce the options of those who do want to succeed,”
The purpose served is trying to allocate a finite budget to achieve the chartered goals of the school in order of priority – to align spending with mission.
How about this as a straw-man alternative: fire all the teachers and staff, sell the buildings, and disburse the entire BHS budget in the form of annual checks to each household with a high-school aged student. In an economic sense, we’ll have absolute equality of opportunity. Probably (hopefully) you agree that would be a horrible idea. So, instead, we have to spend that finite budget on the school. Which students needs are the highest priority, and to what extent? How do you draw that line? The baseline achievement goals may be arbitrary but I think some arbitrary line is necessary to prioritize goals and it is hard to think of a better goal.
You say: “I don’t agree with the notion that simply b/c a few bright programmers were kicked out of school early but were still successful is a model for other scientific disciplines. Having graduated from Caltech, I can testify firsthand to the difference in knowledge sets required for good performance in something like CS compared to say basic Chemistry.”
Certainly CS and Chemistry are different. What I think is constant between them is that high achievement is most often, and best, the result of mostly self-directed and informally-mentored learning beyond basic orientation. A good goal for classroom time and advising structure is trying to get kids into that self-driving mode. A good goal for a campus is to be part of an environment where that self-driving mode finds opportunity.
As a straw-man compromise proposal for the science labs what do you think of this notion: Yes, cancel the lab periods but don’t take all of that money away from science – only part of it. Put the remainder towards funding a faculty-advised “science club” that has some access to the lab facilities, that encourages self-directed learning, and that emphasizes student-on-student mentoring (with a focus on also attracting students who perform poorly in science classrooms)?
You write: “So at this point I am in the camp that thinks that there has been no showing that the current programs are inadequate to serve underachieving students. In this respect the fact that there is still an achievement gap does not tell me one way or the other if such programs are effective. Let’s look at some real data, like the capacity of the programs, the number of kids in such programs that attend, the number that could attend but don’t, the class attendance rate for enrollees, their achievement rate, etc., before concluding that robbing Peter to pay Paul makes sense.”
I would like to see some better metrics all around, as well. That’s one very frustrating aspect of the whole debate. That said:
Let’s take something like the class attendance rate and what to do about it. One notion (yours?) is to say “Well, BHS isn’t forcing anyone to not show up so, it’s job is done just by holding open the seat.” I don’t buy it. I think its legit for BHS to step up in loco parentis and hold kids accountable. If the actual parent is there to step up then great! But if not, I don’t think it’s consistent with the mission of a public high school to just throw up our arms and say “those kids get what they deserve”.
You wrote: “Thanks for reading, I enjoy your commentaries.”
Thank you for writing. One thing that I think we both agree about is that the debate is impoverished by the lack of solid data and basic analysis. The arguments against the principal’s plan that I try to reject are those that come from the notion that it is in principle wrong to cut back on science lab hours to help under-achieving students. The arguments against the plan that I like are the ones that point out how vague the plan is, how much what details it contains lack a clearly stated rationale, and how hard it is to understand the problem from the paucity of commonly available data. I think as concerned citizens we’re kind of between a rock and a hard place trying to pick this or that outcome for which to advocate.
Here is some information that will keep your thoughts on this subject fact based:
1. Unfortunately BHS did NOT get a 5M dollar grant. It is closer to 1.7 million over several years with the potential of a two-year extension.
2. Almost all of the money goes to supporting teachers in the roles of professional development leaders at a 20% release from classroom teaching. The idea is to strengthen teaching practices so all kids get a challenging education. Not an easy task but not an impossible one either.
3. BAYCES gets some money but it isn’t that much (around 40K per year at the most).
4. Not all science classes got additional funding (0.25 FTE vs. .20 for other classes) for labs outside of periods 1-6. Science classes for struggling students (read mostly black kids and kids with disabilities) got 25% less time with their teachers than classes for higher achieving (read mostly white kids). AP science classes got even more additional time. The “non-lab” science classes had very poor outcomes as far as student passing rates go I have been told while the AP classes did great. Not much of a surprise: The more time the teachers had with the kids the better they did. But the policy falls along racial lines: black kids in general get less academic time with their teachers and fail while white kids get more time and do better as a result. Berkeley may have been one of the first schools to begin integration but they are obviously far from taking the task beyond the level of symbolism. Can you imagine if BHS was proposing this as their “plan” for the future? One really has to wonder how the current design ever got approved. It must have begun when they were going through a new principal every six months and clearly nobody was paying attention.
With the elimination of the after school science lab science teachers will have to teach five periods a day-just like all the other teachers at BHS. Even with this increase in their workload many of the science teachers I have talked to support the proposed changes.
5. The small schools are actually held to a much higher level of accountability than the larger programs. I believe if you go to the BUSD school board notes from the past you will see that they have to annually present a report on the academic progress of their students.
6. All over the nation high school kids are receiving their science education within their regularly scheduled classes. And many of these kids are getting first class educations as well as being inspired by the wonders of science.
7. The choice of how to use the measure A funds are determined by the school sites. There is no inherent right for it to go to science labs for some kids.
Now for some opinions (other than the ones that slipped in above):
1. Increase the science requirements for ALL students. We live in an increasingly technological world and there is no such thing as knowing too much about the world. Just distribute the resources equally along racial lines for goodness sake.
2. Stop acting as though Jim Slemp (and/or BAYCES) is some evil puppet master trying to destroy education. The kind of stuff I read here sometimes belongs on Faux News and the Glen Beck show.
3. Just because people don’t agree with your opinion DOESN’T mean you weren’t heard. It just means they aren’t convinced by your arguments.
4. The causes of the achievement gap are complex but that can not be an excuse for not trying. The solutions the school should consider are the ones that are within their locus of control: curriculum, resource allocation, and academic support.
5. Data and accountability needs to be handled in a professional and not political manner. i strongly recommend that BUSD adopt a “value added” analysis to all current and future programs and practices. How else are we going to know if what we are doing with our money is having any impact?
6. Focus less on how many AP classes a kid can take and a bit more on how we can grow healthy and happy young adults. Help them get some balance in their lives.
Thomas,
Just two points since I have kid duty this Saturday morning:
I think this is still an unsupported conclusory statement. These folks are failing the baseline, but I don’t see anything concrete to show that they are “under” served. Again, if we had some real data on the programs, their capacity, their effectiveness, etc., then we could test your premise.
I guess we disagree on what is an acceptable level of proof on this point.
I submit that if the proponents stopped talking about the achievement GAP – thus putting into play the comparison to other groups – your point would be more valid. But they don’t pitch it as a failure by one or more groups to meet baseline; rather, they harp on the lack of “equity” in a system that results in a GAP. Thus to me at least they don’t hide their real goal or agenda.
Furthermore there’s simply no denying the intended cause and effect present here; the action takes away from one group with the intent to benefit another. Where is the analysis that suggests this is the best way to improve the underachievers? Why don’t we cut (hypothetical) janitorial services? Or some other non-academic cost?
take care
JNG
Dear “Fact Checker,”
The Dept of Ed grant that was submitted without school board approval is for $1,013,530 for 5 years, with an additional $700K possible in year 4 if the high school is in compliance with grant terms. The required matching funds (that will have to come out of the BUSD general fund and Measure A) are about $3.6 million, for a total budget of $5,298,688. So this grant for the Berkeley High redesign is costing the school district $3.6 million over 5 years, not giving the school district $1 million.
The line item for contractual expenses for outside consultants is $688,500. BayCES receives $596K and Paul Gibson & Associates receives $92,500. By the way, this consultant surely should not be on the school governance council, where he votes for measures from which he directly benefits financially, and where he supports measures of which he is supposedly the independent evaluator. I’m sure you will work to correct this situation, since you profess support of non-political data analysis.
The 180 page grant proposal is found on the BUSD website under the 8/08 school board meeting agenda/minutes.
If non-lab science classes have worse outcomes for students, then all the more reason to support science labs for all students. Let’s have labs for those non-lab science classes and compare results. Science labs are taken by most of the students in Berkeley High, not just white students. They’re for everyone, although they help struggling students the most.
I do not believe small schools are held to a much higher level of accountability than the rest of the high school. Please share your evidence. Certainly small schools have more classrooms and more teachers per student, with average class sizes more than 15% smaller than the rest of the high school, and the results are much worse than the rest of the high school. Here’s the percentage of students who are proficient or above in math:
2006
AHA Small School 12%
CAS Small School 11.5%
CPA Small School 7.7%
SSJE Small School 6.7%
(no separate data for AC/BIHS)
2007
AHA Small School 12.0%
CAS Small School 4.8%
CPA Small School 3.6%
SSJE Small School 7.1%
BIHS (IB) Program 39.2%
Academic Choice Program 36.3%
2008
AHA Small School 20%
CAS Small School 5%
CPA Small School 2%
SSJE Small School 11%
BIHS (IB) Program 31%
Academic Choice Program 32%
Since Berkeley High’s school site council and school governance council are under investigation for being out of compliance with the state education code, their votes are illegitimate and do not reflect any community consensus. It is becoming more apparent by the day that the Berkeley community will do what it takes to preserve science labs for every kid at Berkeley High.
One of the worst things for failing students at BHS has been the principal’s refusal to let them retake courses they failed the prior semester. Students used to be able to retake say, chemistry A in the spring if they had flunked it in the fall. The new policy, instituted by a principal who is calling for seeing everything through an equity lens, requires all students to complete year-long courses in sequence. So if a student fails chemistry A in the fall, they have to take chemistry B in the spring. This not only sets up students for failure, it ensures that they won’t learn the material and I would hope that is what we all want to see happen. This sort of mis-step is what has so many of us confounded and angry because there has been absolutely no comprehensive review of how to proceed with sound education policy. The only common thread in the block scheduling plan, the trimester plan, and now the science lab elimination plan has been reduction in academic instructional minutes.
So I find the above advice on focusing on a happy and healthy child particularly unctuous. Poorly educated children are neither happy nor healthy.
Get the students up to grade level in middle school, increase academic instructional minutes, maintain science labs, and let kids repeat a semester of a class they’ve failed. Why aren’t those of you who are so adamant about eliminating science labs championing these sure-fire and simple measures?
Ms. Burke,
What you are citing as required matching funds includes the salaries for administrators, parent liaisons, lead teachers, and benefits among other things. ALL of these items are costs the district pays regardless of whether or not BHS had gotten the federal grant. Why not include all teachers’ salaries and just say the “redesign” will cost around 100 Million over five years? It is misleading to suggest that these are costs as a result of the grant. Clearly you and I know the difference but others less informed might not.
What is the purpose of statements such as “submitted without board approval”? Grants for extra resources for BUSD are written, received, and spent all the time without board approval. And by the way, after it was awarded to BHS by the feds the board approved the accepting of the money. The receiving of a large grant from the federal government should be applauded rather than looked at askance as though it were part of some nefarious plot.
You said: “If non-lab science classes have worse outcomes for students, then all the more reason to support science labs for all students.” Based on the single data points (not a good method for analyzing programs by the way) you provided above, I would argue that that money would be better spent on English and math. To evaluate a program’s effectiveness, you really want to look at the change in scores over time. And the use of a state test, which high school students place no value upon, would probably not be the metric you would want to use. This is why I would strongly encourage the district, or at least the high school, to use a value added method to analyze programs and practices. Single data points don’t tell us anything about the effectiveness of those programs but only that they attract different types of students.
Nobody thinks science labs should be eliminated. The use of this phrase is intentionally misleading since all they are talking about is the doing of labs within the class-which is what EVERY other school in the country does at the high school level. What we are really talking about is giving extra teaching time to SOME BHS science students and not to all of them. Here is the National Science teachers association position on labs:
-With the expectation of science instruction every day, all middle level students should have multiple opportunities every week to explore science labs as defined in the Introduction. At the high school level, all students should be in the science lab or field, collecting data every week while exploring science labs.
-Laboratory investigations in the middle and high school classroom should help all students develop a growing understanding of the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work, as well as the skills to calibrate and troubleshoot equipment used to make observations. Learners should understand measurement error; and have the skills to aggregate, interpret, and present the resulting data (NRC 2006, p. 77).
-As students progress through middle and high school, they should improve their ability to collaborate effectively with others in carrying out complex tasks, share the work of the task, assume different roles at different times, and contribute and respond to ideas.
There is no mention of after school labs because this is not the standard of practice at the high school level.
I agree that if we give more teaching time to students in science classes they will do better. Currently the “non-lab” science classes still have labs-they just do them in the classroom. Increasing the teaching time by 20% (40% for some AP classes) should increase outcomes by an equivalent amount. Has anyone done an analysis to see if that is indeed what we are getting? If we aren’t getting at least that much at baseline then we are not getting our money’s worth.
While I am in no position to correct the “problem” of Paul Gibson and Associates having a conflict of interest, I did use my typing skills to send an email and I found out that they are no longer doing the evaluation of the grant.
My position:
-All kids should leave high school knowing how to read, write, work together to solve problems, and do math at an appropriate level.
-All kids should take more science with labs. Those labs should be in the classroom, which is the standard of practice at the high school level.
-The measure A funds should be used in a way that is determined by the high school teachers and administration. If they choose to use it for science labs as they have in the past so be it (although I may disagree I trust they will have a solid rational). If they use my tax dollars for helping all kids read/write/do math I think it will be a better use of the funds.
I’ll quote from the 8/11/08 BUSD School Board packet, page 5:
“The United States Department of Education (USDE) has indicated that it will fund a Smaller Learning Community grant at Berkeley High School provided that the Board of Education gives assurances the attached grant proposal will be fully implemented. The USDE imposed this additional requirement when it was discovered that the Board did not give prior approval to the grant itself and that a consultant submitted the application in the name of the District.”
That doesn’t sound like business as usual to me.
The $3.6 million encumbered by the matching funds requirement of this grant either goes to staff time devoted to staff development and in-kind support, which means less time available for those crusty things like actual professional management and teaching, or else the statements in the grant proposal are fraudulent.
Readers can come to their own conclusions. I would only add that the reason this matters is because this grant is why academic instructional time for science labs and other entities is at risk, whether you wanna have it as a separate period or within a class period. Given the dire economic condition of BUSD, it would be a smart move to rescind this grant and the $3.6 million encumbrance.
And I suggest people identify themselves to show their support for the concept of transparency.
I stand corrected about the sequence of events regarding the board and approval of the grant. Perhaps I am naive but I don’t see the
“The $3.6 million encumbered by the matching funds requirement of this grant either goes to staff time devoted to staff development and in-kind support, which means less time available for those crusty things like actual professional management and teaching, or else the statements in the grant proposal are fraudulent.”
The total FTE for teaching students at BHS is unchanged. The grant provides additional FTE for professional development and leadership. I’m not sure what you mean by “crusty things like professional management”.
“I would only add that the reason this matters is because this grant is why academic instructional time for science labs and other entities is at risk, whether you wanna have it as a separate period or within a class period. Given the dire economic condition of BUSD, it would be a smart move to rescind this grant and the $3.6 million encumbrance.”
Academic instructional time for science labs is not impacted by this grant. There is a temporal relationship between the school site discussion about how to use its Measure A funds and the grant but various groups have been asking for a conversation about this for years now, long before BHS got a grant from the feds. I would love to hear from someone as to how it was decided (and by whom) that the majority of the Measure A funds would go solely to SOME of the science classes. Can you imagine that proposal having to go before the school board? “We have this great idea. We want to give more instructional time to the kids who are doing well at school and less time to the kids who are struggling. And if you are in an AP class we will give you even more time! Yes, we know that the resources will be allocated along racial and socio economic lines.”
The school has a responsibility to teach all of its students and shouldn’t cater to the well heeled, influential, and privilaged class at the expense of those without such access and resources. I know you agree with me on this point: Putting personal needs above the needs of the greater school community is the pinnacle of selfishness.
I’m a black single mother of 3 children in Berkeley. All my children go to local schools. And although I have a policy of never responding to anonymous posters like Fact Checker, that person has hit all my buttons and I bet you anything it’s a female white liberal with some guilt problem. Guess what? You do not speak for me.
First, you said that the high school people listened to what the community had to say and we did not convince them. You’re wrong on this point, like you are on just about everything else you claim. I went to the public meetings last year where parents were supposed to be able to say what they thought about the high school redesign. Let me tell you, I have never been treated so badly in my entire life and I was told I couldn’t talk. So the high school people definitely do not listen-they don’t even let people talk or ask questions at public meetings.
And guess what else miss white liberal? It’s not up to the Berkeley community to convince the high school people about our points of view. It’s up to the high school people to convince us that what they’re doing is in the best interests of our children.
I have lost all confidence in the principal and you so-called progressives who are so patronizing it gives me a stomachache just thinking about it. You have no idea how hard I worked to have a job that pays my rent and lets me raise my 3 kids alone. I want my children to have the same education they’d get if I could afford to live in Piedmont or send them to private schools. But I can’t. So don’t you tell me what’s best for me or my children. And don’t you tell me that it’s selfish for any parent to want the best education they can get for their own children. That kind of talk is one big waste of time. I want my kids to have good science labs and good math and good education. So shut up with your crap about personal needs and the need for my kids to sit in a class about equity. That’s the last thing they need and as far as I’m concerned, it will only hurt them.
Right on Wanda, please make your statement publicly to the school board.
This community continues to suffer this same farce repeatedly, while parents hope for the best till their kids escape. The only redesign we need is to fire the tyrant Slemp and hire a competent, accountable principal, a serious Supt and and accountable board of education.
These so called progressives are the worst racial paternalist imaginable. Lord knows if your kid actually does experience discrimination in Berkeley schools, then no one gives a damn. I wish I never raised my kids in Berkeley, they both barely made it through intact. The oldest was saved by double period science instruction, the youngest is struggling in college, woefully unprepared, thanks to Jim Slemp dismantling of any program at BHS that actually delivers.
I noticed something today. I was thinking about the plight of high achieving students at BHS in the face of cut-backs on programs that favor them. I was doing some spot comparisons to a private school with a pretty decent track record at advancing high achievement students (Phillips Academy, Andover).
At Andover, they still use a trimester system. At BHS, a trimester proposal was recently rejected. The comparison is a little bit misleading – some Andover courses are “year long” or, as they put it, “a full year commitment”. It’s not like you get to take 3/2 as many courses. But you can squeeze in more minor courses on a trimester schedule.
At Andover, there are indeed 8 class periods on the bell schedule however students need special permission (with some strict conditions) to be permitted to take more or less than 5 courses at once, adding up to perhaps 23 or 27 hours. It’s an 8-period bell schedule but students are supposed to have around 5 class periods per day. This is as it was when I was there (about 27-25 years ago). It works out nicely. I spent my free hours, often, playing (self educating) in the computer labs or the library.
At Andover, the most ridiculously advanced science courses (e.g., the biology course where students spend lab time doing genetic engineering) take up 6 hours per week. That would roughly fit in a modified BHS schedule without extra-period science labs but with one double-period in the advanced science courses (and a five-courses-at-a-time norm, with some 4-hour courses in the mix).
One conclusion I begin to reach is that if you want your high achieving student at BHS to have a private school quality of education: you should be demanding less classroom time, not more (and also better libraries and other opportunities for self-education). Less classroom time probably also adds up to smaller classes – wealthy though it is, Andover is nothing if not Yankee-style frugal.
Another thing about Andover, very imperfectly implemented in my day but probably improved by then (from what I can tell): Every student has an academic adviser and every adviser a manageable number of advisees – with mandatory meetings on a regular schedule. My advisor back in the day sucked rocks through a straw, so to speak. He was an old-school sadist, still smarting from the admission of girls into the formerly all-boys school. He was the dismal exception. Mostly advising seems to pay off – somewhere between mentoring and acting in loco parentis. (Funny story, off topic, about the admission of girls to the school. The younger faculty members, one let me know, managed to get the old school faculty, like my adviser, to agree to admitting girls by playing to their prejudices – intimating that they had to let girls in because, well, the boys are starting to bugger one another in the dark hallways. Sick political trick but true (well, true enough, it’s hard to compress the full story into just a few words).)
Antipenultimate comparison: at Andover, and I remember having a real love/hate relationship to this – *daily* and mostly *vigorous* athletics is mandatory, every term. The academic day was interrupted by (in my case) intramural ultimate frisbee, cross-country skiing (which, absent snow, turned out to be mostly just jogging in the mud), etc. The BHS web site suggests that BHS has but 5 PE instructors. Andover had a similar ratio but a good solution: ALL ABLE BODIED FACULTY AND ADMINISTRATION were required to help with the athletic program. Thus, our ultimate frisbee games were overseen (and played in) by a guy from the music department. The skiing/jogging was overseen (and joined in) by a guy from the administration (dean of students). Very nearly (not exactly, but nearly) every single student spent an hour or an hour and a half getting a half decent workout, most days of the week, often in a team-building environment. I was always the fat kid. I hated sports on one level. I love every minute of it in retrospect. I can’t tell you how important and valuable this component was, though. Words fail me. I’ll just say that it’s critical, in my opinion. Parent-age over-achievers no doubt know the value of daily exercise. Well, HS is a good place to start.
Penultimate comparison: A half-decent diet was assured. This is also critical. BHS is in some ways way beyond Andover in this department (better offerings) and in another way, way behind (dismal participation). I’m not so sure about this whole “open campus” thing for lunch. I’m also not so sure BHS is wise to schedule campus-wide nutrition breaks rather than having groups of students take them at different times. Regarding scheduling: it’s a good thing if students can’t always meet their friends for lunch because of conflicting class schedules.
Final (ultimate) comparison: Every single student at Andover, in my day, had a job. I presume but don’t know this rule is still in place. The system at Andover was imperfect but I’ll describe it and offer my corrections: The jobs were called “work duty” and you got them by assignment (roughly a lottery though the faculty could make exceptions). Example jobs: washing dishes in the cafeteria (back in the 50s, waiting and bussing tables in the cafeteria); groundskeeping; shoveling snow…. that kind of thing. Just a few hours per week, but mandatory. The cynical view is that that simply saved the school money but, really, it was much more than that. Consider washing dishes: On the one hand, students have to work with and be supervised by the bottom rung of the hired staff. On the other hand, students are given incentive to submit their dirty dishes for washing in a considerate way because, next term, it could be them who has to deal with the mess. On the third hand, students gain some confidence in their ability to, needs be, flip burgers for money, so to speak. Andover had it slightly wrong (probably still does) in that the work was mandatory but there were no wages. There should be wages, even if they are “funny money” that can only be spent on, say, basic school supplies or school lunches.
So, why do I embarrass myself “bragging” about my experience at Andover — a school which I do NOT recommend and have harsh criticisms of in other contexts?
It is because some of the vitriol I see against the principal’s action plan for BHS seems to come from middle-to-high-achieving student parents who are loathe to see a reduction in classroom time for science. My message to such parents is that you aren’t looking at the big picture. Students the caliber of your children thrive at places like Andover with *less* class time but a *more well rounded* educational experience with individualized attention by an adviser and high expectations and imposed responsibilities. Beef up athletics. Implement “work duty”. Keep kids on campus for a good lunch. Give kids idle hours, nearly every day (which struggling kids can spend on being tutored). Don’t fret so much about the number of hours in science beyond a certain point (say, equivalent (whatever that is) to 6 hours/week at the very highest (AP and beyond) level). Don’t think it’s wise for kids to have much at all beyond 25hrs/wk classroom time. Start to think holistically about the system and your kids.
Hey there, Thomas Lord — you have been a patient witness to this whole complex struggle on the BUSD achievement gap, even though you’re not presently a ‘member’ of the school system so to speak…. I was interested in knowing whether you might want to attend the upcoming meeting on the Berkeley Alliance 2020 Vision for Berkeley’s Children and Youth. I’ve already been to two of the presentations myself, and as a PTA officer I am already feeling a little too invested in my own parochial viewpoint. It would be interesting to hear about it from someone such as yourself. If you’d care to attend and be a fly on the wall, here is the information (and, if you happen to have a few better things to do on a Saturday than attend a meeting, I understand perfectly!!!)
“Saturday, January 9 2010, from 10 am to 12 noon at James Kenny Recreation Center, 8th and Delaware. The 2020 Vision for Berkeley’s Children and Youth is a community-wide movement to ensure academic success and wellbeing for all children and youth growing up in Berkeley, by closing the achievement and health gaps in Berkeley’s public schools by the year 2020. Please join us to learn more about 2020 Vision, give your thoughtful input, and help guide this important work!”