Weekly News Archive

October 5 (’03) – October 11 (’03)

The Comprehension Gap

The Achievement Gap, our modern-day grendel, is possibly the single most important and most persistent challenge facing Berkeley High today. There have been more dire problems, but those were crises, short-term situations that — like an electrical fire — flared up hard but were quickly dealt with by the interested parties. In contrast, The Achievement Gap (hereafter referred to as TAG for short) is a virus, embattled, besieged, assaulted with the best weapons the local self-appointed procurers of justice could bring to bear, but always escaping, evading, squirming away; the cockroach of social problems.

The premise is simple. There exists two classes of students: “Good” kids and “Bad” kids. (Naturally, nobody would ever characterize them as such, but volley-firing euphemisms does little to change the reality.) Good students are the ones with an entire academic roadmap layed out in detail for the next ten years of their lives — they must have such a job in such a place, which will require such a degree from such a university, which will require such grades and perks, which means you’d better do that essay, boy. It’s not just a set of pedagogical goals and means; it’s an entire way of life, a complete mindset that shapes everything he does and every decision he makes.

The Bad kids are another story. These are the students who, for whatever reason or reasons, remain unimpressed by the concept of devoting utterly the first 20 years of their lives toward the dubious prospect of self-embetterment. As a result, they have an utterly different paradigm. They aren’t losing at the Good game; they aren’t playing it at all. As a result, by the Good standards, they are miserably failing.

With the stage thus set, the conflict may make its appearance. The tension of the Good and Bad niches isn’t a problem — in one sense or another, such categories always exist. Rather, the factor that makes it an issue (and brings the War on TAG to the forefront of everyone’s priorities) is the lines that they tend to follow. Racial lines.

Whites and Asians, for the most part, are Good students. Blacks and Hispanics are prevalently Bad. It’s not always the case, but enough so to be stastistically significant. And this is entirely uncool.

Simple.

Except not.

The trouble with this easy, bipolar depiction is that it fails to take into account several vital pieces of the story.

One is the fact that teenagers are not case studies.

While it would be a pleasure to be able to drop everybody into easy up/down, left/right, good/bad, smart/dumb categories, doing so would be a crime. Not because it would lack sensitivity or political correctness — it’ll be a cold day in hell when I start to care. But it’s simply inaccurate. Berkeley High does not operate on a “well curve”; like so many things, the majority of us are middle-of-the-roaders, not trailing on the ends.

In other words, far more students are mediocre than excellent or failing.

As I’ve said before and will keep saying until someone beats it out of me with a wet fish, at Berkeley High the way of life is apathy, dejected uncaring, a pathological lack of interest; school is simply not what most of us care about, and if we get passionate at all, it’s not about our education. More than anything, school is just an obstacle, another annoyance to deal with in your day, like dropping your toothpaste in the sink and walking around with a sore ankle. It’s not a question of x set of students having that magical “something” that makes them driven and brilliant, while y students mysteriously lack it and need it given to them. Rather, think of them as the traditional bell curve — a few overachievers, a few underachievers, but the vast majority is in the middle. It’s perfectly true that these “middlers” have their own hierarchy, a miniature curve of their own, but only within the bounds of the overall scheme.

But nobody cares about middlin’ folks, and students doing “okay” don’t show up on statistics or press releases. Instead, TAG is touted until it seems to be the most dangerous crisis since the aliens invaded — rather than a simple lack of perspective.

That’s one thing to consider. But here’s the crux:

TAG is a problem because certain ethnicities of BHS students are performing at a higher level than others.

Now, hypothetically, consider the same issue, only without the factor of race.

“Some students are performing at a higher level than others.”

No kidding. The only activists who would try to confront that situation are those who won’t rest until the entire world is a homogenous utopia.

So it’s a tragedy that blacks and Hispanics are doing more poorly than whites and Asians. Yet if a mixed-ethnicity group of students was doing more poorly than another mixed-ethnicity group of students — which it is, always — then it’s part of life. No problem. Can’t make them all the same.

Does this mean that the problem is inherently different when race is involved? Or just that it rings all the right politically-correct alarm bells?

Here’s another consideration — and it won’t be popular.

I’ve been at Berkeley High for two years and a bit. It’s a true vortex; a whirlwind of activity and goings-on. Impossible to attend there a week without a story to tell.

I’ve seen a lot. But never once in my time at BHS have I looked at a student, or a class, or an assignment, and said, “Someone could try their hardest at this and not succeed.”

I won’t claim that any student can make straight A’s from all the hardest classes. But that’s not the bar; we only want everyone to pass, to do tolerably well, receive their diploma and be on their way. And never once have I confronted a class that — if I put in my best effort, came to every class, did all of the classwork and homework, and did what the teacher wanted rather than try to circumvent it — absolutely could not be passed. Never have I met a student in such a class that was physically unable to pass it. Some have a harder time or an easier one; that goes without saying. But not once have I encountered a student that tried his best, worked his hardest, and simply could not do it.

The system isn’t built that way. Maybe in college, one could find a subject so incredibly challenging that he absolutely could not make sense of it, and blew the final exam worth 100% of his grade. But that’s not how it works in high school, at Berkeley High. There is so much support for the struggling student, such a strong infrastructure to help anyone who honestly desires to succeed, that it would take a mentally-challenged rock not to pass his basic classes. If you work with your teacher, explain all your problems, accept any help offered, and do everything asked of you, you will pass. No teacher will look at that and fail you.

So what creates the large class of students with repeated F’s on their report cards? It’s when they don’t come to class. They don’t do their work. They don’t study, they don’t try.

Am I blaming these students? Not at all; they make their own decisions. But I do blame the faculty, administration, or community members who want to believe something is at fault other than the student’s attitude.

It’s social. Perhaps even cultural. Students don’t go home and find themselves unable to study because their father keeps slapping them with fish or because their busy drug-dealing schedule won’t leave them resting for a moment; they go home and decide not to study because they don’t want to. Whether it’s embedded in their upbringing and community, or a personal decision, the fact remains — they’re watching TV, they’re hanging with their friends, they’re doing everything but school. They don’t care. They’re not interested.

And any attempts to change their performance in school will continue to be a total and utter failure if they continue to treat the symptoms — failing grades and lackluster performance — rather than the disease — unmotivated students. If the student wants to learn, he will do more to facilitate that and do it better than anybody else in the world.

If he doesn’t, nothing can help him.

— Brandon