Comments

I have seen the "homework" assignment described in this posting. There is absolutely no exaggeration on the part of Mr. Oto. I sat with another parent (who is a UC Berkeley Professor of science education) and tried to understand what this was all about. I can only conclude that Mr. Oto is correct in suggesting this is a way to "weed out" students for oversubscribed courses. The alternative, that someone would distribute the pages without realizing they were unacceptable, is just too depressing.

Unfortunately, it was not limited to AP Biology. The homework assignment given to the students interested in AP Chemistry was, while not nearly as densely photocopied, was also missing edges of the pages and much of the text was unreadable due to toner smudging and improper toner density.

thanks for the entertaining, while slighty discouraging, read. two things: 1. photocopier, even those at your school, normally use toner instead of ink. 2. don't you have a school library?

Toner = ink in my lexicon. They end up as the same thing on the page.

And yes, there's a library, but I sincerely doubt that they have textbooks there.

I'm impressed for the first time in a while at your site mr. oto...it seems you may be falling pray to the pitfalls of being a teenager. I commend you for being human. This is the first entry in a while that has been both well-written [though all are] and indicative of emotion on your part. "mad props" as it were.

As a science teacher at BHS (currently on leave), I have a different perspective on this issue, perhaps. I should begin by stating that I've had previous communication with Brandon in other contexts--I respect his take on things, like the website, and love his writing.

In this particular case, his opinions express in no uncertain terms the frustration thatstudents and teachers alike feel in the bureaucracy that is Berkeley High. There may be some means of addressing some of his concerns, but mostly, I wanted to explain how the whole AP game works at BHS.

First of all, the double-period science tradition (now gone) gave BHS science students a unique advantage: it was possible for a student who had never taken even a single chemistry class to take an AP Chemistry class, cover all of the material, and get AP credit both on their high school transcript and on the national exam. Some of the "power students" made good use of this system by stacking their schedule with AP Chem during sophomore year, AP Bio during junior year, and AP Physics during senior year.

This gave BHS students some real advantages compared to students at other schools, who have to take a year each of Bio, Chem, and Physics before settling on one AP class that they would take their senior year. The BHS double-period system worked well, but had one big drawback.

Not everyone is an AP student. There's nothing wrong with being a non-AP student--I certainly wasn't one in high school--and any student who has a "real life" outside of school is going to have a tough time finding the time and energy to commit to doing well in AP. At most high schools, a student is required to pass Intro to Chemistry with a certain grade at some point before being admitted into the AP Chem class their senior year. This isn't "gatekeeping"; it's one way (perhaps an awkward one) of trying to keep students from being "set up to fail."

BHS had no such prerequisite system, because a student could walk right in and take the class with no previous experience required. This created some problems. When students are allowed to register for AP classes "at will," the school year begins with a lot of AP classes filled with students. Within a week, the difficulty of the course and the workload causes some of them drop (requiring rescheduling). Within a month, more have dropped (requiring more rescheduling and, in some cases, reassignments of teachers). It was decided at some point to attempt to assess which potential AP students would be a good risk for taking the class, and which ones should be counselled or discouraged from taking the course. Enter the "Skills Assessment," which AP science teachers used to give to students during the spring--scores from this assessment were used, along with teacher recommendations and academic record, to create class lists for the limited number of AP classes that are offered starting each Fall.

Fast forward to now. Double-period science is gone, but the science department still wants to offer students the same advantage that it has for the last 50 years: the possibility of taking an AP science course every year, from sophomore to senior year. As an AP teacher, still want to help students in making their decision, and need to somehow determine who the likely prospects are. What should I do?

As I understand Mr. Oto's article, he's not so much concerned with the 12-page assignment itself, but with the fact that someone chose to try to reduce it to a single page. Now granted, this may have been a somewhat clumsy solution to the problem, but here IS the problem: Take 120 prospective AP Bio students, give them each 12 pages of reading at a Kinko's cost of 5 cents a page, and we've got a $72.00 copy bill before the class has even started. And I don't know what the current state of Berkeley High's budget is, but I can tell you that in the math department where I'm currently working, each math teacher has a copy budget of just over $120.00... FOR THE YEAR.

Obviously, times are tight, and everyone is feeling the squeeze. And maybe trying to reduce this assignment to a ridiculously small size WAS clumsy, or even somewhat thoughtless. But I don't see it as evidence that "nobody cares," and it certainly doesn't deserve someone being lambasted as "b*tch-a** motherf**** piece of s***." Mr. Oto is ordinarily a bit kinder, and a lot “gentler,” to teachers at BHS, who share the same plight as students at the school: we’re often being told what to do, but not always given the materials or circumstances to do it.

Just my thoughts from this side of the lectern.

I very rarely lose my temper like this, which I hope I've demonstrated. The Bio assignment was a particularly special case, not only because of the level of its self-trumpeting ludicrousness, but because it finally broke through my (probably naive) bubble.

It made me realize that most of the people around really don't care. Or, if you disagree with that, then at least the students are not a priority.

Some individual points:

1) We've got a perfectly good photocopier. Maybe "perfectly good" is a poor description for most of the technology around here, but it's functional, generally speaking, and we don't need to pay Kinko's to handle our facsimiliation. Of course, that doesn't mean copies are free, but we can certainly afford them. My history teacher alone hands out several multi-sheet packets of reading material every single day. That's a lot of paper. Interestingly, it's all in a readable size. To my knowledge, teachers have no strict limit on their photocopier usage. And this was a one-time expense.

2) Our budgetary situation right now is dismal, but I haven't heard any word about toner being the next thing to be slashed. We do run out of white paper occasionally, but hell -- pink may be annoying, but it's legible. For that matter, I might not have even objected to two pages per sheet, or four, or maybe everything on two double-sided pages. This was a single page.

3) The fact that this may have been a cost-cutting measure did cross my mind, and in truth, I'm sure that it was a relevant factor. However, the blatant reality of the extent here blew it away as a probable motivation. There was truly no way that someone could have looked at this handout and felt that it was within the margin of error for an ordinary piece of material. It was simply BAD. I have not heard a single student who didn't respond to the mention of the Bio packet without unleashing a string of verbal abuse.

In all honesty, while I'm sure this will never happen, this was the kind of thing that, had it occured in a workplace, could result in a class-action suit. Cost cutting at the expense of the workers' health.

In short, I absolutely do not believe that this could have been purely to save resources. Even if it started that way, once the first sheet was printed the perpetrator would have instantly known he had to make the decision. Therefore, I'm forced to consider that they did it intentionally, and since I'll assume that it's not for masochistic reasons, my next best guess is that -- in lieu of a more rigorous "Skills Assessment" -- they decided to simply whittle down the class size by brute force. By making the assignment so physically difficult that it presented an obstacle only the most dedicated students would be willing to cross.

Hell, it worked for me. Not that I don't want to take the class -- I don't want to take it from anyone who would do something like this.

He that is warm thinks all so... Valentine

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