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It’s spring again, time for math placement tests at Berkeley High. The math department requires that any Berkeley student who did not attend a Berkeley public school in eighth grade take a placement test which measures their knowledge of Algebra I as taught in the Berkeley Middle Schools in order to earn a place in Honors Geometry. Students coming from a Berkeley Middle School are allowed to enter Honors Geometry if they achieved an A or B in Honors Algebra I and have the recommendation of their teacher. 

Since the children taking the test are coming from many different schools, which used different textbooks for Algebra I, it is often difficult for them to pass a test based on the BUSD curriculum. The math department will not tell parents what percentage of the students who take the test pass, but the year my youngest child took it, I heard that it was five percent. A friend who teaches at one of the most respected private schools in Berkeley estimates that it is 15 to 20 percent. Does it make sense that only 20 percent of students coming from selective private schools can do the work required in Honors Geometry? Of course not. What we have is a situation where students who received an A in Honors Algebra and have the recommendation of their teacher at Prospect-Sierra, or St. Pauls School, and score above the 95th percentile on standardized math tests, are placed in regular geometry. 

How is this fair? Well, the math department says that BUSD students take a test to get into Honors Algebra, which is similar. This is nonsense. The test that the students in BUSD take, in the comfort of their own classroom, not in the intimidating and foreign environment of BHS, can’t test knowledge of algebra, because the students haven’t had algebra yet. The only fair way to administer a placement test for Honors Geometry would be to require that all eighth graders go to the high school and take the same test, no matter where they attended middle school.  

The more logical course would be to accept the A and the recommendation of the algebra teacher, no matter where the students attended middle school. When my oldest son entered BHS, in 1996, that was the policy. The math department contends that too many students had trouble with Honors Geometry under that system. In other words, they feel it is preferable to keep qualified students out of the course rather than risk phone calls from worried parents. They don’t allow students to drop back to regular geometry. Contrast their rigidity with the flexibility of the Spanish department at the same school. They allow students to choose the level of Spanish they take in ninth grade themselves, and change after a few weeks if it’s not working out. 

The math teachers I have consulted maintain that there is little relationship between how a student performs in algebra and how that student performs in geometry anyway. Geometry is a detour in the math curriculum, much easier for some students with a good sense of spatial relationships. The head of the math department at BHS is fond of saying that only students who love math should take the honors curriculum. Would that we all lived in her world, where we only have to study what we love. I don’t love math, but I had to take calculus in order to become a physician. I had to take it in college, and struggled mightily, because I had a weak math background in high school. If you had told me that I would be a doctor when I was a freshman in high school, I would have laughed. Concerned parents know that strong math preparation in high school is a prerequisite for many careers. 

Many of us had the opportunity to hear the educator Pedro Noguera speak recently at a fundraiser for the Berkeley Schools Foundation. He advised us to look within our own district for the solution to problems where children are denied opportunity. I have mentioned the Spanish department. The science department at BHS can also serve as a model for the math department, since they recently did away with the tests they used to require for students to take AP science classes.  

Students should be allowed to achieve at the highest level they can. The math department consistently discourages achievement. When my second son entered BHS in 1999, he passed the placement test by one point. The math teacher grading the test on the spot advised him to take regular geometry anyway, “Because students from St. Pauls don’t do well in Honors Geometry.” He made an A in the course and received a state award for excellence in geometry on a standardized test. 

Finally, we parents who pay taxes for public schools and yes, BSEP taxes also, yet commit the sin of sending our children to private school, may deserved to be punished by the math department. But our children don’t. It broke my heart to watch my daughter lose confidence in herself as a good math student because she didn’t pass the placement test. All the rhetoric coming from BHS about closing the achievement gap rings hollow when a black girl who is an A algebra student and scores in the ninety-ninth percentile in math on standardized tests is denied access to the honors curriculum. 

Dr. Toni Martin is a physician, writer and mother of three BHS students: class of 2000, class of 2003 and class of 2006. 

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