Posted on 01/24/2010 8:44:09 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Campus leadership has proposed cutting before- and after-school labs -- decreasing science instruction by 20% to 40% -- and using that money to fund "equity" programs for struggling students in an effort to close one of the widest racial and ethnic achievement gaps in the state.
The racial and ethnic makeup of science classes was considered when crafting the proposal to shift money away from science instruction.
White students predominate in the science classes that require supplemental lab time, according to an analysis by a lead teacher in the Berkeley High math department. Her study also showed that three-fourths of the students who take less-rigorous science classes -- those that do not require extra lab time -- are African American or Latino.
In this famously liberal college town, which prides itself on having one of the highest concentrations of PhDs in the country, the debate has revealed deep disagreement over how best to help underachievers, pitting haves against have-nots, whites and Asians against blacks and Latinos.
"This became a race issue, because just about everything that happens in Berkeley is fundamentally viewed through that lens," said Glimme, who acknowledged that "there's a very clear difference by race as to who shows up to the lab classes."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Why don’t they just increase taxes? Simple stuff.
Highest concentration of PhD’s, eh? Guess it’s true what they say about being educated doesn’t necessarily mean being smart.
Biased headline. The kids who benefit are “struggling,” but only if they’re struggling and also WHITE or ASIAN, out they stay.
Won’t work. Because as long as you have a culture which refuses to value education (”acting white”); demands ebonics;
considers insisting on proper grammar to be “racist”; etc...
you will have an obvious disparity between students from that culture and students from a culture where learning is venerated (as, for example, in Africa, where students learn from English-language text books—a foreign language to them—with oftentimes only one book in the class, which belongs to the teacher—and yet they excel.)
Example: at one point, ALL the MBA business candidates at Harvard who were black, were African immigrants. They make up a very small percentage of blacks in America, yet they got ALL the top spots.
Race has nothing to do with it. Culture does.
This is a prime example of “DUMBING” down the educational system .
Only deranged Lib-tards could come up with this.
This crap boggles my mind. Now tell me how this will make a difference in achievement, and why is this going to make things equal? Amen.
Then there are those claiming race does not matter. Racial issues are destroying our nation. Cut science for what amounts to the provision of “Ethnic Studies” the made up topics certain groups can feel good about.
At this point anyone who sends their kids to public schools and then complains about the schools gets NO RESPECT from me at all. We have the Internet now (and we had Thomas Sowell long before) - it should be no secret that public schools (and many private schools) are nothing more than EXPENSIVE DAY CARE (if not worse).
Amazing that people think schools are still what they were even a generation ago, not to mention two generations ago.
I couldn’t agree more with your statement...the sad thing is that if your some sort of celebrity or media figure or politician you would get burned to the coals and called a racist for mentioning what you just said...So the truth doesn’t get out there
Wait till all those brainy berzerkly PhD's take their little darlings out of BHS and put them in private schools where they can get their lab classes.
They just never learn, these educrat einsteins.
That's the only way left to sell Global Warming, or whatever it has been renamed to this week.
Not everyone can afford to send their kids to private schools so I pity them. Not everyone in an area should be painted with the same political brush, I know a few families who live in Berkeley and they are not lefties. These individuals would still be paying their school taxes if they did take their kids to private schools and that is the real shame.
Sooner or later this ethno crap is going to end badly here.
Good plan. Get rid of Reading Writing and Arithmetic and replace them with Communism 101.
How many of these PHD's even know how to change a tire or change a lightbulb, let along actually do this themselves instead of hiring an illegal to do it for them?
THIS is why it has become impossible to make cuts from budgets. A sympathetic liberal media will use their big ol’ crocodile tears with every attempt to be fiscally responsible, and a naive public will respond, thus, forcing officials to change their minds.
A GOOD EXAMPLT OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE FEDS TAKE OVER LOCAL SCHOOL SYSTEMS. EDUCATION SUFFERS WHILE THE SCHOOLS BECOME INVASIVELY INVOLVED IN PRIVATE LIVES. GOVERNMENT CAUSES THE CRISIS SO GOVERNMENT CAN BECOME THE TROJAN HORSE. AS RONALD REAAGAN SAID, “GOVERNMENT DOESN’T SOLVE PROBLEMS, GOVERNEMTNT IS THE PROBLEM”.
“Campus leadership has proposed cutting before- and after-school labs — decreasing science instruction by 20% to 40% — and using that money to fund “equity” programs for struggling students in an effort to close one of the widest racial and ethnic achievement gaps in the state.”
**************
“From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
Science is racist!!!
We can always get scientists from India and China what we need are new leftist sheeple.
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