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.
I previously looked at some elementary schools showing results for Black students.
GO produced this report, looking at how low income Black and Latinx students are doing.
You can view all the middle school results here. But let’s dig in a little on some of the schools showing results for Black middle school students.
You can see earlier posts on on the data for all students for elementary schools here, middle schools here, and high schools.
Middle Schools that Showed High Scores and/or High Gains in Math and ELA for Black Students-Those on Multiple Lists
The lists of schools below cover 6-12 and middle schools that have relatively high test scores for Black students and also those showing relatively high gains from year to year to year. So I am highlighting schools that appear on multiple lists– showing high scores and also gains in math and ELA, or some combination.
Some schools appeared on all four lists, East Bay Innovation Academy had strong overall results and gains in both subjects as did Oakland School for the Arts, Claremont, Oakland SOL, Epic Charter, and Elmhurst United— very impressive work. Others appeared on three of the lists, Downtown Charter Academy had impressive overall results and gains in ELA, joining BayTech as the only 2 schools to make 3 lists.
Schools on two of the lists included Alliance Academy that showed impressive gains in ELA and math, American Indian, Edna Brewer, Bret Harte, CCPA, and Aspire Golden State.
I also share some graphs of the CORE growth data, which does a very good job of measuring actual student growth but unfortunately does not include all schools. Alliance shows up impressively on both math and ELA growth and Epic, Claremont, and Lighthouse Community Charter each made one list.
6-12 Schools Showing High Results for Black students
Middle Schools Showing High results for Black Students
6-12 Schools Showing Progress with Black Students
Middle 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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