Liberal education policy

From the a San Francisco area weekly newspaper (thanks to "areader" for the link):

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 underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

It’s almost like it’s a parody from The Onion, but it’s not, it’s really happening.

* * *

Commenter “blighter” gets what’s happening:

This is, of course, a perfectly logical next step in the battle to "close the gap". After decades & countless billions spent trying to narrow the racial gap by raising the lower side proved utterly futile, the obvious thing to try is lowering the top side.

True equality of outcome can only be achieved by lowering everyone's outcome to that possible for the least capable person. We'll get there eventually.

Well, not for the elite, they'll sit in their gated communities, surrounded by their private-school, Ivy-league educated friends and voice their enthusiastic support for destroying the above average in the name of creating equality for the mediocre.

Comments

[Brutus]

Sooner or later we're going to have to publicly address NAM parasitism without the euphemisms.

[David Alexander]

So Berkeley HS seeks to lose its accreditation and ruin the potential of the students that will graduate regardless of race. Even if the black and Latino students magically pass, there degrees are worth even less since the school didn't even provide basic lab classes...

[Easy Peasy]

It would make an interesting thesis, the argument that a prerequisite to fall for a secular religion based on guilt and self-loathing (such as modern liberalism) is an above-average IQ. It's like a parasitic meme for smart people.

There is no cure, except having to face the consequences of their belief system. But until the NAMs and their civilization-destroying behavior invade SWPL enclaves, faith will stay strong.

As for this case, those liberals too smart to be true believers will just send their kids to private school.

[ed]

One note: these are science labs that are held *outside of regular school hours.*

See
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-12-17/article/34289?headline=Plan-to-Eliminate-Science-Labs-Stirs-Controversy-at-Berkeley-High

[Lil' Barry Bailout]

Parody? Are you under the impression that the objective is something other than bringing all students to the same level of incompetence?

[J. L.]

"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 two can be combined. Conduct experiments on those struggling students.

The underacheiving students get bonus points for participation, the schools keep the science labs, and Berkeley saves money which it can then spend on homeless transients.

[Outraged]

And this story:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/015173.html

Damn senior Japanese tourists at it again! I'm calling the consulate!

[reiver]

Growing up in Canada (where it was almost completely white) they did similar stuff to this.

The class and school gets slowed down to a level not to far from the dimmest students.

I think it speaks more about schools, bureaucracies, and maybe government involvement in them.

[John Standos]

Has devoting more resources to help struggling minority students ever produced the results they expect?

[OneSTDV]

"Has devoting more resources to help struggling minority students ever produced the results they expect?"

Somehow, 50 years of failure hasn't tempered their optimism.

[Yawner]

"Even if the black and Latino students magically pass, there degrees are worth even less since the school didn't even provide basic lab classes..."

The degrees of black and Latino graduates of this HS are ALREADY worthless, because these students don't take the lab classes and graduate regardless of their lack of actual educational achievement.

[jared]

What really sucks is that you need a strong science background if you want to get some of the good jobs out there nowadays. How does taking the opportunity to get a head start on science education away from minorities help them?

[R4P]

Shrill leftist Greg Laden on scienceblogs has been attacking HBD relentlessly for the last week or so. He's cussed out some commenters and generally made a fool of himself.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/

[Le Mur]

When did "struggling" become a euphemism for "stupid"?

[Peter A]

"the science labs were largely classes for white students"

I find that shocking. No Asian students in Berkeley? Or are journalists already unconsciously lumping Asians in with Whites?

[sabril]

"How does taking the opportunity to get a head start on science education away from minorities help them? "

I think the point is more to hurt white people than to help NAMs. That's what is so troubling about this story -- it demonstrates the logical conclusion of the egalitarian cult.

[More HS fodder]

HBD-denialism could be a possible explanation for the Nigerian plane bomber, I'm suprised you haven't brought this up. Read this article

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34618228/ns/us_news-washington_post/

The suspect, Abdulmutallab, was driven to despair by his loneliness at the elite schools he attended. Why was he lonely? It seems he was probably less intelligent than the other students and could not keep up. Some revealing excerpts:

Farouk1986 wrote often of the college admissions process, once describing his plans to study engineering at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley or the California Institute of Technology. But he also wrote of his disappointment in scoring a 1200 on the SAT. "I tried the SAT," he wrote in March 2005. "It was a disaster!!!"

Fabrizio Cavallo Marincola, 22, who studied with Abdulmutallab at University College London, said Abdulmutallab graduated in May 2008 and showed no signs of radicalization or of links to al-Qaeda. "He always did the bare minimum of work," Marincola said of his classmate, who he said was nicknamed "Biggie."

Farouk1986 wrote of being born in 1986 and having attended an elite British boarding school in Togo, where many of his classmates were British expatriates...

"I have no one to speak too [sic]," read a posting from January 2005, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was attending boarding school. "No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems."

Maybe these elite schools in certain parts of the world where regression to the mean can be especially severe, should IQ test all of their students to prevent the lower IQ's from becoming lonely and prone to radicalization. I would bet that Abdulmutallab, with a 2005 SAT score of only 1200, had a much lower IQ than his British expatriates and even his fellow African classmates at the expensive schools he attended.

[blighter]

This is, of course, a perfectly logical next step in the battle to "close the gap". After decades & countless billions spent trying to narrow the racial gap by raising the lower side proved utterly futile, the obvious thing to try is lowering the top side.

True equality of outcome can only be achieved by lowering everyone's outcome to that possible for the least capable person. We'll get there eventually.

Well, not for the elite, they'll sit in their gated communities, surrounded by their private-school, Ivy-league educated friends and voice their enthusiastic support for destroying the above average in the name of creating equality for the mediocre.

[Truth]

"What really sucks is that you need a strong science background if you want to get some of the good jobs out there nowadays."

What good jobs need a science background?

Engineering and computer science jobs are being outsourced/off-shored to other countries or filled up with Asian H-1B visa holders in this country.

Nursing and medical job skills can be taught in college/med school labs.

Sorry, nerd boy, science classes in high school are not the end-all-be-all.

"How does taking the opportunity to get a head start on science education away from minorities help them?"

How many minorities are taking science classes?

If a majority of the people in this school are minorities, then guess what: resources should be devoted to getting them up to speed on the basics.

What good are science classes if you haven't mastered basic reading, writing and arithmetic?

[Kevin K]

Its not clear to me that labs are all that helpful in learning science. If you have good books and teachers who can guide you through the problem sets and can write good tests on the vocabulary and concepts then you are most of the way there.

Most of the foreign students I met in grad school didn't do many labs. Some grew up in absurdly poor conditions. You can catch up pretty quickly in college/grad school if you are motivated.

[sestamibi]

Bye-bye, Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, eh?

[Turambar]

I am not sure what the 'East Bay Express' is but it had an interesting linked article "Rich, Black and Flunking".

It addressed the racial achievement gap in relatively affluent children of professional black parents in a suburban school system, Shaker Heights, OH.

It discusses the research of John Ogbu in the black community there. It is relevant to the frequent discussion on this blog of HBD-realism and HBD-denialism.

Certainly this case of even considering a removal of science labs as a way to address those pesky racial achieve differences is a case of HBD-denialism goign wildly bad.

But in this excluded-middle thinking where either no results gap can ever be the result of a biological difference, or alternately all differences must be explained in terms of genetic differences, it is interesting to consider this summary of Ogbu's study:
http://www.hepg.org/her/abstract/38

"He suggests that Black students in these schools subscribe to a “norm of minimum effort” (p. 23), positing that “low-effort syndrome” — defined as low engagement in schoolwork and homework — contributes to Black student disengagement. ... However, many Black students in the study did not heed their own advice and reported doing “just enough to get by” in many of their classes. Interestingly, the students did not believe they lacked the intellectual ability to do the work; they merely chose not to do it or to enroll in higher level courses because it took extra effort. As one student stated, “I maintain a 3.0, but I won’t do anything over that” (p. 23). These types of responses from Black students encourage the reader to question the origin of these attitudes. Black students attributed their minimum effort to boring and uninteresting classes, a lack of motivation by school personnel, poor study habits, other priorities that derailed academic effort (such as part-time jobs), and peer pressures (i.e., “it’s not cool” to work hard or show you’re smart)."

Ogbu notes that black students in the study under-perform their IQ and their SES.

As for th factors that are present:
"Finally, this section provides an excellent chapter (ch. 11) on Black parents’ involvement in their children’s education at school and at home. Ogbu’s findings on parental involvement certainly steer this discourse in a new direction by specifically looking at parents’ educational strategies at home and at school (i.e., how the parents went about implementing their educational aspirations for their children). Ogbu found that the overarching “cultural model of pedagogy” of the Black parents was that teachers and the schools should make their children learn and achieve success. Given this ethos, Black parents’ school participation and involvement were dismal among working-class, middle-class, and professional parents. Similarly, parental involvement at home indicated a lack of close supervision of children’s homework, poor coaching on effective time management, lack of shielding from negative peer pressures, and ineffective methods for motivating children to engage in schoolwork. When one considers the community forces simultaneously with system factors, Black student academic disengagement becomes a huge dilemma in U.S. education."

"...Ogbu posits that immigrant minorities understand and evaluate public schools as a “delegate agency” designed to prepare them for social and economic upward mobility, while non-immigrant minorities are not sure that education is the key to success. He also suggests that while both minority types experience conflict with White Americans and mistrust them, non-immigrants are more concerned with how they are treated in schools and whether schools and teachers “care for them” than with teachers’ expertise in providing the skills that students need to be productive citizens in society."

Consider the last part in terms of your own experience of "good teachers"- did they allow you to turn in poor work? did they allow missed assignments or return papers without a lot of notes, both good and bad? Not in my experience.

All this to me reenforces Thomas Sowells observations- that most of what is wrong with black academic achievement is black culture- everything is seen through the lens of victim-hood and racism. If black kids get bad test scores, it because not enough is being invested by those mean tax payers. If you child gets bad grades in a class its because the teacher doesnt understand the black experience. Its the government's responsibility to educate kids, not the parents.

Obviously for a parent the best thing to do is to isolate the child into a private or charter school where all the peers will give them an appropriate orientation to academic success.
Without bulldozing much of black culture how can there ever be across the board achievement improvements?

Take for instance the HP- racist meme goign around that has 1.5M his on YouTube:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2009/1222/HP-s-racist-webcam-harbinger-of-motion-tracking-troubles

How can a culture that assumes a plot against them anytime anything goes wrong ever make any progress?

[gc]

"If a majority of the people in this school are minorities, then guess what: resources should be devoted to getting them up to speed on the basics."

According to data kept by the California Department of Education, 40 percent of the students at Berkeley High are African-American or hispanic, and 42 percent are white or asian. (Some students did not reported their ethnicity.)

According to Nobel Laureate James Heckman, remedial programs for struggling students are generally not very cost-effective once students reach an advanced age. Test score gaps already exist at age 3.

Racial differences in brain size already exist in the womb, but they won't teach you that at Berkeley High.

[nothing]

Education, schmeducation.

This makes perfect sense and I'm all for it, but not because of the reasons discussed in the article. Lucrative jobs such as janitoral worker, casino greeter, food services worker, retail and other assorted low paying, part-time, dead end jobs with no benefits, being the fastest growing "professions" in our glorious economy, who needs science labs and education?

Attending college means piling up debt (at least for the non-rich kids) and even less job opportunities (see above). So, what's the point of having exceptional education in this country when most jobs right now and in the future require little, if any training?

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_104.htm

[Try the Fabian strategy]

I didn't like the lab work either (altough some AP classes were heavy on it), and seeing that I never wanted to go into lab-related career, fat benefit it all netted me. But for a guy who is heading for pre-med or chem eng, this ain't good. It also ain't good for the taxpayers whose money gets spent who knows on what.

That being said, maybe this calls for privately run lab courses. If you can have a "karate school" and "basket weaving school" why not a "chem/bio lab school"? Think of it as Fabian strategy for the spread of private education.

[GLS]

These science labs aren't part of the regular curriculum, they're extras. It seems entirely reasonable to me for the school to decide that these resources are better spent on different programs.

That said, it doesn't sound like the principal has an actual plan for what he wants to do with this money, other than aiming it very broadly at underperforming students. That's bad.

[Alex]

More HS fodder wrote:

"Farouk1986 wrote often of the college admissions process, once describing his plans to study engineering at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley or the California Institute of Technology. But he also wrote of his disappointment in scoring a 1200 on the SAT. "I tried the SAT," he wrote in March 2005. "It was a disaster!!!""

---

1200/2400 is at the 15th percentile, which is a standard score of 85 (using SD of 15). Guys a dumbass.

Try the Fabian Strategy wrote:

"That being said, maybe this calls for privately run lab courses. If you can have a "karate school" and "basket weaving school" why not a "chem/bio lab school"? Think of it as Fabian strategy for the spread of private education."

---

I like this idea.

[Sheila Tone]

Fodder wrote: "The suspect, Abdulmutallab, was driven to despair by his loneliness at the elite schools he attended. Why was he lonely? It seems he was probably less intelligent than the other students and could not keep up."

Fodder, understand that HS has a knee-jerk reaction toward Muslims. Normally he's good at analyzing how loserness causes bad behavior, but when it comes to Muslims, it's gotta be BECAUSE THEY'RE MUSLIM.

It's one of his stereotypical Jewish traits.

Myself, I noticed that the bomber seemed to never have a girlfriend. Normally HS'd be all over that, but there you go ...

[Outraged]

And stay out of public transportation as well. But this story doesn't bother me too much, don't know why though... Get the mop!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/12/29/2009-12-29_cyan_brown_16_accused_of_stabbing_man_to_death_on_christmas_eve_surrenders_to_co.html

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Fodder, understand that HS has a knee-jerk reaction toward Muslims. Normally he's good at analyzing how loserness causes bad behavior, but when it comes to Muslims, it's gotta be BECAUSE THEY'RE MUSLIM."

Oh, I don't know. There are a lot of dead Byzantine emperors who would agree with Sigma's "knee jerk" analysis of Muslim behavior.

[Zeenon]

@Alex: In 2005, people were still measuring their SATs out of 1600. 1200/1600 is above average but not "smart".

[empirical]

Like many young adults, he was concerned with preparing for university studies. He said he hoped to study engineering at Stanford
"1200/2400 is at the 15th percentile, which is a standard score of 85 (using SD of 15). Guys a dumbass. "

hmmm i think he was refering to 1200/1600...

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/1229/Farouk1986-what-Christmas-bombing-suspect-wrote-online

"he believed he had the grades – straight As – to gain admission. He was less pleased with his SAT scores, but thought they would be good enough."

“I tried the SAT. It was a disaster!!!” he wrote in 2005. “I didn't practice well and I got 1200. Although I checked the prospectuses, and my SAT grades are in bound with the accepted grade boundary in Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley, so I didn't bother doing more SAT tests.”

[John]

As a chemistry professor, I can tell you that the lab is an absolutely essential part of a chemist's education. Not only does a good laboratory program reinforce what is done in lecture, but more importantly, no matter how good your book knowledge is, if you can't use a buret, perform a distillation, or run column chromatography, you simply don't know how to be a chemist. Yes, I know that most people who take chemistry don't become chemists, just like most people who take history don't become historians. Should high schools not require research papers because most people don't do that for their jobs?

This is pure leftist equality ideology gone mad. I'm so glad I don't live in Calfornia anymore. It's no place to raise kids.

[Kudzu Bob]

Re Half Sigma's "sterotypical Jewish traits": Something tells me that if there really is a secret Hebrew conspiracy to rule the world, Half Sigma ain't gettin' his cut.

[AshAndMistyInLove]

"1200/2400 is at the 15th percentile, which is a standard score of 85 (using SD of 15). Guys a dumbass. "

Well, maybe we could provide corroborative evidence by finding a sample of his posts and use a readability test. However, I would not recommend doing this on forum posts (unless one looks for his most complex piece of writing) since most people do not put much thought into forum posts and blog comments.

[Jack]

99% of the terror suspects are Muslim. Anyone with sense knows that a "knee jerk" attitude towards them is the correct one.

[More HS fodder]

Alex,

In 2005 the SAT was out of 1600, as other commenters have pointed out. So the perp wasn't a complete dumbass, he was slightly above average. At a regular US high school he'd be a normal college prep student. But his classmates at all the expensive schools he attended were probably smarter with significantly higher scores. He was out of his league, which left him lonely and vulnerable.

[Haumea]

Turambar:

So why aren't blacks in Africa smarter/higher performing?

This would be a more plausible theory if one could find some sufficiently large group of blacks somewhere in the world which on average performed close to Whites or Asians. If one accepts the theory that black American culture is even immune to upward mobility producing academic/cognitive motivation, then surely controlling for this culture should produce strikingly different results, no?

[sabril]

"So why aren't blacks in Africa smarter/higher performing? "

I think this is a good question. Actually, I think the "culture of failure" argument is unfair to blacks since it implies blacks could succeed intellectually if they only worked on improving their attitudes.

If blacks improved their attitudes, they would probably be happier and less self-destructive, but they would still not perform intellectually at the level of Europeans or Orientals. And they would still need to submit to the leadership of others in order to take part in modern industrial society.

JMHO

[Turambar]

Is any group performing well in Africa's schools? I believe Africa in general is such a basket case that no one would do well there.

Obgu's research seemed to show (I have only read a summary) that black immigrants did better than native blacks.

Taking one data point- Obama was the son of a black immigrant living at the very edge of America and raised by white grand parents. He seemed to have done well until he to college in California, where he got into negative behaviors like cocaine and community organizing.

[AshAndMistyInLove]

"If blacks improved their attitudes, they would probably be happier and less self-destructive, but they would still not perform intellectually at the level of Europeans or Orientals. And they would still need to submit to the leadership of others in order to take part in modern industrial society."

Yes, I do too appreciate the Kobayashi Maru scenario for blacks. Does criminal activity have a higher perception of social status among blacks than having an "honest" life --- that is competing with other NAMs and low IQ whites in the zero-sum (or negative sum) unskilled job market for low wages? Half-Sigma says teaching them middle class values would help, but I do not see how a work-ethic will help them at all.

Kevin MacDonald pointed out this scenario eloquently:

"This argument suggests that increased ethnic competition resulting from immigration in the United States will tend to undercut all aspects of individualism in the long run, including not only the subversion of economic individualism by ethnic conflict, but also science as it applies to human differences and ethnic conflict. We are already seeing powerful forces preventing the open discussion of racial and ethnic issues related to IQ, criminality, and minority group ethnocentrism. Indeed, Rubin opposes affirmative action because of its likelihood of increasing resentment among those excluded on the basis of merit. But he offers no corrective. How can an ethnically diverse society with enormous genetically influenced group differences in intelligence and other traits conducive to upward mobility design social policy in a way that satisfies all the groups in the society without either creating resentment among talented groups who are excluded in favor of the less talented or creating resentment among underachieving groups who see themselves relegated to the lowest rungs of the society? Given his economic arguments, Rubin would probably maintain that affirmative action should end and that underachieving groups should just accept their lot because it is good for society as a whole. I view this as a psychological impossibility."

http://www.theoccidentalquarterly.com/archives/vol4no1/km-rubin.html

[Yawner]

1200 out of 1600 might get you into Caltech or Stanford if you're a NAM, but no way this side of hell will Joe WhiteKid get into those institutions with those scores.

[Haumea]

"Is any group performing well in Africa's schools? I believe Africa in general is such a basket case that no one would do well there."

Right - although some countries are significantly better off than others (and yet none approach First World levels), in general it is a basket case. But one has to ask, is that the cause or the effect of low cognitive performance? I'm curious to see hard, detailed data on African immigrants in the US and UK, because anecdotally at least, there aren't many African medical researchers, physical scientists or mathematicians of note (as opposed to say, Asian immigrants.)

[Felix M Moore]

Kevin K questions whether "labs are all that helpful in learning science" and notes that kids can study books and do problems.

this may impart a knowledge of science, but it won't teach them how to be scientists. More importantly, it won't motivate them to do science.

(slightly off topic, but the math analogue is doing challenge topics, leading to math olympiads)

[anonanon]

I was a non-studying, homework-dodging party girl and got over a 1200 out of 1600 in the early '80's after taking no honors/AP classes in an ordinary suburban HS. I barely graduated because back then you only had to have 20 credits to graduate. If I had passed every class I would have had 24 credits. There is no way I was qualified for a science major. So calling this guy above average is a real stretch or just a very low average to compare him with. Not above the average among college students in any case. Maybe not a dumb ass in absolute terms, but close to the bottom of the college barrel.