Peggy Scott, one of the four parent representatives on the Berkeley High School Governance Council, sends this update from yesterday’s meeting:
[Berkeley High School principal] Mr. Slemp announced that the enhancement funds that pay for 0 and 7 period labs may not be available due to cuts in the state budget. He does not plan to take his new plan to the School Board meeting next Wednesday 1/13.
Additionally, the next SGC meeting, which planned to consider the first round of equity grants, will not have that item on the agenda either. On the other hand, that doesn’t automatically mean parents shouldn’t go to the Board next week. Nothing is certain; everything is up in the air. The Governator is supposed to release his budget for the schools at the end of this week and that will be an important factor.
What can I say? We live in an age of uncertainty and now you can add this to the list.
I am pleased to report that Mr. Huyett, Dir. Issel and Dir Selawsky also attended the SGC meeting to discuss parity issues, composition of the Schoolsite Council and possible redesign of the high school SGC. As the Policy Committee, it is their job to (among other things) to make sure that all BUSD schools have governance structures that are in alignment with the state Education Code.
While it has been slow going, I believe they are making a good faith effort to fix this situation and assure compliance. They hope to meet with parents in the very near future to discuss this matter. When they do, please show up! This is unbelievably important. Consider the fact that a Schoolsite Council is supposed to have 1-to-2 parity as regards parents to high school staff, and our current SGC has 1-to-5 parity. That is the group that voted to de-fund science labs.
Perhaps with true parity the same thing would have happened, perhaps not. But I say this to express just how important this governance issue is. So OK, I am a wonk*…
I hope this is a reasonably accurate report.
Xin nián kuài lè (Happy New Year)!
*wonk – Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: a person preoccupied with arcane details or procedures in a specialized field.
Read Berkeleyside’s previous coverage of this issue here:
Endangered science at Berkeley High School [12.11.09]
Science at BHS: An open letter [12.14.09]
Science and equity: BHS parents weigh in [12.16.09]
BHS Board meeting dominated by science issue [12.17.09]
Berkeleyside on Twitter
Roots of Reform/Redesign movement
-Glenn Singleton diversity consultant
-BayCES
-BHS Diversity project members who morph as needed into new organization
for political leverage: UIA, PCAD, 2020 Vision, BOCA etc
Huyett created an Equity Initiative as Supt in Lodi which is why the BUSD board hired him
check out two blogs from Illinois school communities critical of Singleton “unique” perspective of equity. There lies the conflict, Berkeley activists prefer to blame institutional racism as the primary reason for the achievement gap contrary to an enormous body of research identifying literacy, kindergarten readiness, neighborhood, and poverty as primary factors.
It is a sad day when conservatives advance social justice principles better than so called progs.
http://owneducation.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html
http://www.theactivistnextdoor.com/component/content/article/1-blog/14-draft.html
blog with some background on Singleton’s concept of racial predictability (embraced by UIA and 2020 planning group)
BHS double period science program was designed by UCB and taught at BHS for 65 years until 2001/02 when Supt Lawrence reduced the school day to 6 periods. The program is based on direct instruction with regular feedback to students via assessment, which is why it is so valued by students, teachers and parents. In order to complete the plan for “wall to wall” small schools advocates felt they had to dismantle the dept based governance structure hence the attack on the science dept. By reducing the school day to 6 periods they automatically cut double period science and created the O and 7th period lab schedule augmented with BSEP parcel tax funds.
PTA Council leaders worked with the science teachers to develop alternative scheduling options. Supt Lawrence nor the board would discuss the proposals. We had a fiscally viable schedule which maintained the 7 periods day, with double period science, split lunch closed campus (reducing truancy and increasing BUSD budget, currently general food subsidizes the food court while students eat downtown) more electives available in a four year program, and most important a resource period scheduled into the school day. This resource period could solve the current need for an advisory period which is the primary motivation to redesign the school day.
For the newcomers and those without a kid in the fight, all I can say is what school board member Joaquin Riveria told me before my 1st kid attended BHS
“BHS is a different animal”. So most of the rhetoric comments I read here do not connect to the reality of BHS politics, culture or climate.
Relevant commentary and the research on Direct Instruction:
Achievement Gap / Ignoring what works in exchange for more handwringing.
Research-
http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf
Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not
Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist,
Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and
Inquiry-Based Teaching
http://www.tnr.com/currentissue/story.html?id=3a0cdac1-44a1-461b-b676...
“Direct Answer”
John McWhorter, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, January 14,
2009
A solution for the reading gap between black and white children was
discovered four decades ago. So, why aren’t we taking advantage of it?
One does not expect to see New York’s school Chancellor Joel Klein on
the same stage as Reverend Al Sharpton. Klein is infamous for his
emphasis on test scores and shutting down schools that fail to measure
up. Not so long ago, Sharpton was in the barricades with Russell
Simmons protesting mayor Michael Bloomberg and Klein’s plan to cut New
York City’s education budget.
Yet these days the two are teaming up for the Education Equality
Project, which seeks to close the achievement gap between white and
black kids in public schools. And at the New York City Department of
Education’s kickoff in a series on the topic last week, Klein and
Sharpton agreed on most issues. Sharpton, who in his “reformed” guise
has decided that education is a key civil rights issue, actually spoke
up for vouchers and mayoral control of the school board.
The forum was a typical one on race and education, as ritualized as a
religious service. First, an introducer recites the latest dropout
statistics. Then, discussants and audience questioners flag the usual
terms–Low Expectations, Parental Involvement, Vested Interests,
Resources, Accountability–each greeted with knowing murmurs and
applause. A tacit assumption is always that the grievous intersection
of these factors explains why poor children, especially black and
Latino ones, tend to trail so far behind white ones in reading skills–
a maddening gap that persists in National Assessment of Educational
Progress reports year after year.
Yet a solution for the reading gap was discovered four decades ago.
Starting in the late 1960s, Siegfried Engelmann led a government-
sponsored investigation, Project Follow Through, that compared nine
teaching methods and tracked their results in more than 75,000
children from kindergarten through third grade. It found that the
Direct Instruction (DI) method of teaching reading was vastly more
effective than any of the others for (drum roll, please) poor kids,
including black ones. DI isn’t exactly complicated: Students are
taught to sound out words rather than told to get the hang of
recognizing words whole, and they are taught according to scripted
drills that emphasize repetition and frequent student participation.
In a half-day preschool in Champaign-Urbana they founded, Engelmann
and associates found that DI teaches four-year-olds to understand
sounds, syllables, and rhyming. Its students went on to kindergarten
reading at a second-grade level, with their mean IQ having jumped 25
points. In the 70s and 80s, similar results came from nine other sites
nationwide, and since then, the evidence of DI’s effectiveness has
been overwhelming, raising students’ reading scores in schools in
Baltimore, Houston, Milwaukee, and other districts. A search for an
occasion where DI was instituted and failed to improve students’
reading performance would be distinctly frustrating.
Still, at this forum you would never have known Project Follow Through
existed. Key moment: A teacher reminded us to keep “creativity” in
mind as a teaching tool, with coos and scattered applause from the
audience, and Sharpton milking it by chiming in. Indeed, schools of
education have long been caught up in an idea that teaching poor kids
to read requires something more than, well, teaching them how to sound
out words. The poor child, the good-thinking wisdom tells us, needs
tutti-frutti approaches bringing in music, rhythm, narrative, Ebonics,
and so on. Distracted by the hardships in their home lives, surely
they cannot be reached by just laying out the facts. That can only
work for coddled children of doctors and lawyers.
But the simple fact of how well DI has worked shows that “creativity”
is not what poor kids need. At the Champaign-Urbana preschool, the
kids–poor kids, recall, and not many who were white–had a jolly old
time with DI, especially when they found that it was (hey!) teaching
them to read.
In 2001, third-grade students in the mostly black Richmond district in
Virginia were scoring abysmally in reading. But once a scientifically
proven reading program similar to DI was brought in, by 2005, three-
quarters of black students passed the third-grade reading test.
Meanwhile, out in wealthy Fairfax County, where DI was scorned as
usual, the black students taking that test–despite ample funding–
were passing it at the rate of merely 59 percent.
The saddest thing about the blithe neglect of Engelmann’s findings is
that they are the answer to the problems people at forums like these
find so challenging. It’s as if you’re listening to people discuss the
merits of moving a two-ton load of grain into a barn by spreading the
ground between the load and the barn with cooking grease and heaving-
ho. The solution’s “creative,” alright–but hasn’t Engelmann already
invented the wheel?
Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s appointed Secretary of Education, happens
to be a signatory to Klein and Sharpton’s Education Equality Project
to bring “equity to an educational system that, 54 years since Brown
v. Board of Education, continues to fail its highest-needs students.”
In Washington, Duncan might consider taking the blinders off and
forcing America’s urban school districts to teach poor kids to read
with tools that we have known to work since the Nixon Administration.
Otherwise, all we will have is the likes of the audience at the Klein-
Sharpton event coming away thinking the event was “great” because
Sharpton is a jolly presence and everyone got to clap upon hearing
terms like Low Expectations and Resources. I submit that this is a
distinctly thin basis upon which to translate our President-Elect’s
call for hope into action.
John McWhorter is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the
author of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of
English.
Ms. Menard, you write: “Berkeley activists prefer to blame institutional racism as the primary reason for the achievement gap contrary to an enormous body of research identifying literacy, kindergarten readiness, neighborhood, and poverty as primary factors.”
You ought to understand that, from the perspective of us “activists”, what you have said there could be paraphrased as “[you activists] prefer to blame institutional racism as the primary [problem] contrary to an enormous body of research identifying the consequences of institutionalized racism as primary factors.”
I’ll tell you what, though: if you have a plan for fixing the kindergarten readiness of any student who will enter BHS in the next 10 years, I’ll be first in line to nominate you for Nobel prizes in physics and peace!
In contrast, I appreciate your background on the history of double period science. As I pointed out in the other thread, I’m strongly of the opinion that 6 periods is plenty, even for the highest achieving students. A five-course load, including some four-hour courses, should be plenty. I don’t much care if there is an 8-period bell schedule – that’s fine with me. But there is no obvious reason why core curriculum, including AP prep, can’t fit into a 6-period, trimester schedule — leaving lots of room for the other aspects of education.
“Rhetoric comments” = comments with which one does not agree … ?
“So most of the rhetoric comments I read here do not connect to the reality of BHS politics, culture or climate.”
Deidre
I should have edited but I took time out while busy repairing the plaster walls in this dilapidated crack house I bought years ago.
I meant rhetorical, google for definition, if read in context it is obvious my meaning, and NO I have no problem with disagreement or debate, just little tolerance for abstraction that have no relation to the facts. I have been deep in the school issues for years and the person behind several reforms, including a major role in forcing compliance in school governance procedures.
Go back and read the Express spring story about the redesign and you will see that Slemp latest attack is not random nor a budget issue, it is pure retaliation, the smoke screen is clearing.
[...] BHS science/equity debate: The latest [1.06.10] [...]
[...] dominated by science issue [12.17.09]The BHS science flap — the ripples are spreading [12.30.09]BHS science/equity debate: The latest [1.06.10]Next on the BHS agenda: Meeting with superintendent [...]