Free Republic

If liberal politics and good intentions helped all students learn, then Berkeley High School should be an exemplar to all California. Yet, according to its governance council, Berkeley High was identified last year as the high school with "the largest racial equity/achievement gap in the state." The worst part, as far as low-performing students are concerned, is that you can't expect the school district to turn its record underachievement around - not when its governance council, which makes recommendations to the school board on operations, approves a plan with a preamble that quotes Karl Marx: "From each according to his...

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.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...