Is this what they mean by, No Kids Left Behind? Cut the hard classes out so, underachievers can graduate.

Berkeley High May Cut Out Science Labs

The proposal would trade labs seen as benefiting white students for resources to help struggling students.

By Eric Klein

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

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 under performing students was virtually unanimous.

Science teachers were understandably horrified by the proposal. "The majority of the science department believes that this major policy decision affecting the entire student body, the faculty, and the community has been made without any notification, without a hearing," said Mardi Sicular-Mertens, the senior member of Berkeley High School's science department, at last week's school board meeting.

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 teachers, we are greatly saddened at the thought of losing the opportunity to help all of our students master the skills they need to find satisfaction and success in their education," she told the board.

The full plan to close the racial achievement gap by altering the structure of the high school is known as the High School Redesign. It will come before the Berkeley School Board as an information item at its January 13 meeting. Generally, such agenda items are passed without debate, but if the school board chooses to play a more direct role in the High School Redesign, it could bring the item back as an action item at a future meeting.

School district spokesman Mark Coplan directed inquiries about the redesign to Richard Ng, the principal's assistant at Berkeley High and member of the School Governance Council. Ng did not return repeated calls for comment.

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

where will the resources be redirected to, specifically. The racial language of the piece kind of overshadows any actual details....

Will there be NO science offered? are just some of the classees going to be cut? Will there still be science electives for those who have interest? What part of the required curriculum for graduation do these classes make up, if any? Will the redirected resources go towards required curriculum?

,too many unanswered questions in this piece to know if its dumbing down or streamlining based upon necessity.

where will the resources be redirected to, specifically. The racial language of the piece kind of overshadows any actual details....

Will there be NO science offered? are just some of the classees going to be cut? Will there still be science electives for those who have interest? What part of the required curriculum for graduation do these classes make up, if any? Will the redirected resources go towards required curriculum?

,too many unanswered questions in this piece to know if its dumbing down or streamlining based upon necessity.

It's San Fransisco.
If you want to red more, here is their homepage.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/Home

Thank you for the clarification MsHarmony. The problem with no child left behind as I saw it when I was teaching, is that there wasn't enough funding to implement all the new requirements. The good thing is the outreach and the intervention/identification parts of the program. However, as usual, teachers are given more and more extra mandates to deal with, and very little, if any, extra time and funding. They are expected to volunteer their free time and do fundraisers to make up for the needed materials. It doesn't surprise me either that teachers and parents were left out of the decision-making loop. That's par for the course in this country.
Now, if education were really top priority, teachers would be fairly compensated for all they do, and we wouldn't have the shortages we continue to experience of qualified teachers, extra rooms needed and up-to-date educational materials.