Where you send your child to school is one of the most important decisions you can make. The new school quality data was released by the state recently, and I wanted to highlight some of the schools making progress with Oakland children, and encourage families to visit. Every child is different, and I will break it down into subgroups (schools showing progress with Black, Brown and low income students) in the next few weeks and you can also take a look at the schoolfinder tool to find local schools.
But before I get to the public schools showing the most progress, let me give a warning. These numbers may be imperfect. The numbers don’t reflect if more high needs students came into a school, and no number can capture a school, or the variation within it. So please take these lists as starting points and do your homework. I have written before about the perils of using tests exclusively to judge schools. I include data on graduation rates, change (how much scores went up or down from year to year) and status (overall scores), which together provide a more balanced look at school quality.
Digging into the Latest Data
Different schools often produce different results with different students so I will also produce blogs looking at schools showing results for Black, Latinx, API and other subgroups. So keep tuned. The results I analyze are for Black students.
GO produced this report, looking at how low income Black and Latinx students are doing.
You can view all the elementary school results for Black students here. But let’s dig in a little on some of the schools showing results for Black students.
You can see earlier posts on on the data for all students for elementary schools here, middle schools here, and high schools.
K-8 Schools Showing High Results for Black students
Almost all of the K-8 Schools made both lists, having relatively high test scores and also showing growth. Community school for Creative Education shined with the highest growth in both math and ELA and overall impressive results. Hillcrest also showed high overall results and strong growth, particularly in ELA. Other schools on the all lists for ELA included Greenleaf, Lazear Charter, KIPP Bridge, Melrose and American Indian Charter II.
Schools showing consistent results in math that weren’t on the first list include Lighthouse Community Charter and Aspire Berkeley Maynard.
Elementary Schools Showing High results for Black Students
Several schools made very list, high test scores in math and ELA and high growth in both subject. These include, Chabot, Montclair and Kaiser (closed). Other schools that were impressive in making three of the four lists include, Fruitvale, who had outstanding gains in ELA and math, Redwood Heights, Crocker Highlands, Peralta, Cleveland and Lincoln. Manzanita SEED made strong gains in math and ELA and Aspire College Academy, Thornhill, Jaquin Miller, and Aspire Triumph each made two of the lists, but please take a look.
Schools need at least 30 Black students to be on the list, so many smaller schools or those with fewer Black students are not shown.
You can also see data from the CORE collaborative (which does not include all schools unfortunately), that shows very strong student gains at Fruitvale and Madison Park Tk-5 in ELA and PLACE, TCN, Kaiser (closed) and Aspire Triumph in Math.
K-8 Schools Showing Progress with Black Students
Elementary Schools Showing Progress with Black Students
CORE growth data math
CORE growth data ELA
Knowledge is power
please, take advantage of your options and the information at your disposal. There are enrollment portals for OUSD and Enroll Oakland and the window for round1 closes in early February, so get your applications in. Your children are counting on you to do the best by them, and that starts with making informed choices.
Let me know if I can help, and I will be doing future posting on middles and high schools, as well as subgroups.
You have the tools, now use them.
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