Last week, M. Simon emailed me a link to a piece in the East Bay Express about Berkeley High School's decision to cut science labs. The article confirmed what Simon told me in the email: the reason was that too many white kids were interested in science:

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.

Science teachers were understandably horrified by the proposal. "The majority of the science department believes that this major policy decision affecting the entire student body, the faculty, and the community has been made without any notification, without a hearing," said Mardi Sicular-Mertens, the senior member of Berkeley High School's science department, at last week's school board meeting.

Sincular-Mertens, who has taught science at BHS for 24 years, said the possible cuts will impact her black students as well. She says there are twelve African-American males in her AP classes and that her four environmental science classes are 17.5 percent African American and 13.9 percent Latino. "As teachers, we are greatly saddened at the thought of losing the opportunity to help all of our students master the skills they need to find satisfaction and success in their education," she told the board.

M. Simon sent me a link to another piece ("Science in Berkeley, it's a white thing") pointing that white under-representation at Berkeley High most likely reflects their leaving for private schools -- something that cutting the science labs will aggravate:

...it is striking that Non-Hispanic whites are so underrepresented and blacks so overrepresented.There is only one public high school in Berkeley. It is likely correct that blacks in Berkeley are more fertile than the whites, but I don't think the disparity is striking enough to account for the demographics of Berkeley High School. Rather, many whites must be sending their children to private schools.

This action will reinforce this tendency; the type of engaged parents which a public school benefits from won't consider sending their child to one which has to slash science laboratories to focus on remedial education. So Berkeley High School is simply accelerating its long death spiral.

More generally, the bizarre racialist logic used to justify the slashing of the science curriculum, that science implicitly benefits whites, is objectionable (at least to me, and likely to readers of this weblog). Our civilization is grounded fundamentally in science.

This led me to look further, because I think there's another problem which is being covered up. Blacks in Berkeley are not all that large a percentage (9.3%) of the population, but their vast overrepresentation at Berkeley High (29.1%) is not explainable simply by white students going to private schools.

Instead, there may be another cause. A Berkeley friend who knows the inside dirt emailed me to say this:

The gap between black and white students at Berkeley High is shocking. 75% of white students go to college, and 75% of black students never graduate Berkeley High. This is a huge gap, higher than nearly anywhere else. The problem is, I believe, that a high percentage of Berkeley High students are here illegally. I have heard estimates that perhaps 40% have no right to go to school in Berkeley, but nobody wants to address this issue out of fear of being called racist.

Anyway, this correspondence took place a week ago, and in the interim, Glenn Reynolds linked La Shawn Barber's treatment of the issue. La Shawn included a link to the East Bay Express article, and summarized blogger reactions:

Berkeley High's plan apparently was surprising and shocking to tech blogger and Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. Author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More and Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Anderson mentioned the story on Twitter, and other bloggers picked it up.

"I'm not necessarily opposed to race-based proposals," Anderson told me via e-mail. "I just think the premise of this one--'science is for white people'--is absurd and deeply counterproductive."

TechDirt blogger Mike Masnick saw Anderson's tweet. "It seems like there must be more to this story than what's being reported," Masnick wrote. "The concept of cutting science labs because more white students take them just seems too preposterous to make sense."

Unfortunately, there isn't more to the story, and yes, cutting programs because they benefit white students is preposterous and doesn't make sense. But that's what misguided social engineers do.

But as this was during the New Year's fare, and as the blogosphere seemed well-informed, the matter didn't seem pressing enough for me to feel a compelling need to chime in.

Until this morning, when the San Francisco Chronicle intervened with a truly remarkable attempt to change the narrative. No longer are science labs a perk for white students at the expense of blacks. Now, the science labs are downright oppressive! To Mideast-surnamed named female students! No, I kid you not:

(01-05) 19:52 PST BERKELEY -- Berkeley High School sophomore Razan Qatami glanced at the wall clock in her advanced biology lab class and frowned. At 4:15 p.m., she still had about 10 more minutes before she was done for the day.

While most high school science classes incorporate labs into regular class time, Berkeley High requires most of its students to attend labs before or after school in the so-called zero or seventh periods.

That means showing up at 7:30 a.m. to, say, dissect frogs, or staying until 4:30 p.m. - additional class time that not surprisingly costs additional money.

School administrators would like to see that money spread around, specifically to help struggling students, and have proposed cutting out the supplementary lab classes.

Qatami would love to see those early and late labs discontinued.

And of course, those mean, tyrannical, white (or "white-acting") parents who enjoy seeing their children turned into slaves of science have protested:

The idea of ending the labs has raised the ire of hundreds of parents and community members who want to keep the extra science instruction - especially beneficial for college-bound students in advanced placement courses.

"If you take away those labs, you're saying the same amount of material has to be covered in (less) time," said Peggy Scott, a parent representative to the school's governance council. "I don't want my kid testing combustion at my house. I want her to do that in a lab."

Instead, they're speaking about a need for a "conversation":

To be clear, under the administrative proposal Berkeley High's science labs wouldn't be cut from the curriculum.

"The one rumor we need to totally dispel is the district or principal want to get rid of the science labs," said Berkeley Unified Superintendent William Huyett. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

But the community needs to have a conversation about how to keep quality science labs at Berkeley High, no matter when they're offered, Huyett said.

Perhaps we should count our blessings, though. At least this "conversation" is no longer about race.

What I can't figure out is whether the conversation is being dictated by the narrative, or whether the narrative is dictated by the conversation.