And dammit, we mean equal
At Berkeley High School, there is seen to exist a “racial achievement gap,” where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.
The school’s Governance Council has decided to address this problem by eliminating five science teachers and their labs.
How will this work?
Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.
Not everyone thinks this is a swell idea:
Mardi Sincular-Mertens, who has taught science at BHS for 24 years, said the possible cuts will impact her black students as well. She says there are twelve African-American males in her AP classes and that her four environmental science classes are 17.5 percent African American and 13.9 percent Latino.
“As in any war,” says John Rosenberg, “there will be collateral damage:”
[W]ar is hell, and one can easily understand why the Berkeley High School Governance Council would conclude that depriving a few minority students of science labs and advanced placement courses is a small price to pay for the advantage of depriving a larger number of whites and Asians (who presumably are not a minority) of those classes.
Because it’s all about the inequality. Whether anybody actually learns
anything is a peripheral issue at best.
These people are educators, in exactly the same sense that tapeworms are dietitians.
Lisa Paul »
28 December 2009 · 11:48 pm
And that’s why we call it Beserk-el-ey.
Jeff Brokaw »
29 December 2009 · 12:46 pm
At least we can bank on this: someday we’ll reach a state of blissful, perfect equality, where nobody has any complaints about anything ever, and unicorns and rainbows are prominent. So that will be awesome.
unimpressed »
30 December 2009 · 1:11 am
[sarcasm]
There must be something wrong with me. I just can’t comprehend how pandering to the Least Common Denominator is a “good thing”. [/sarcasm]