The Oakland Ed Week in Review: 5/17-5/23

Last week, honoring some amazing employees including Arvella Hayden, some charter changes in Oakland, the money coming from Sacto to schools, the new largest political contributor to Sacto, another volley in the charter wars, proposed changes to the math curriculum, looking at enrollment changes in OUSD and the results from the “opportunity Ticket” better ways to educate Black girls, charters with open seats, a new program to get free internet, and more, please read share and get involved

Oakland:

California:

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Oakland:

  • Oakland Unified School District Announces 2021 Teachers of the Year
    • During the remarkably challenging 2020-21 school year, thousands of educators across Oakland have done outstanding work supporting students. Now, the District is recognizing three of them as 2021 OUSD Teachers of the Year. The three teachers, one each at the elementary, middle and high school levels, will have the opportunity to enter for consideration as 2021 Alameda County Teachers of the Year. As Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell announced at Wednesday night’s Board of Education meeting, the OUSD Teachers of the Year are Jessica Jung at Bridges Academy, Chantel Parnell at Bret Harte Middle School and Whitney Dwyer at MetWest High School.
  • Citing declining enrollment, West Oakland’s Civicorps Academy gives up charter
    • Since 1995, Civicorps has helped hundreds of students earn high school diplomas, but a new charter school operator will take over the academic program.
  • West Oakland Kindergarten Teacher Arvella Hayden Set to Retire After 57 Years
    • Over the course of her career, Hayden has counted herself as lucky to have worked at such great schools. “The parents were very nice. I had nice principals, nice teachers, and everyone seemed just like one family.” 

California:

  • A California program spent millions on devices for distance learning. Here’s where it went
    • For the first time ever, the vast majority of California families say their kids have personal computing devices that they can use for school. But even after a year of distance learning, thousands of students still don’t have a computer or access to the internet at home.
  • Covid’s Political Impact: Teachers’ Union Outspends Big Oil in Sacramento
    • An exclusive analysis of lobbying expenditures in Sacramento by the Bay Area News Group reveals how the coronavirus pandemic has changed priorities and galvanized certain special interests, with the California Teachers Association assuming the role of the state’s top influencer.  
  • California’s Radical Math Curriculum, Make Math Great Again
    • I stand with the silent majority, 56%, of Americans that reject the radical Californian math curriculum that is force feeding our children propaganda in the form of Arabic numerals. 
  • Rice: Why state leaders must reject AB 1316, a deceptive and destructive force against California’s public school children
    • The hypocrisy in education policy can be astounding. Legislators in Sacramento are pushing legislation that supposedly “benefits all of California’s public school children” — AB 1316, a whopping 88-page bill that covers 45 sections of law, is packaged as a charter school reform bill. But what it really does is discriminate against more than 200,000 public school children in the state. A deep dive into the bill’s details reveals the truth and in there the political calculus and biased motives are in plain sight.
  • California math curriculum spurs new controversy about accelerated learning
    • Nearly a decade after Common Core math standards were adopted in California, the majority of K-12 students are not yet meeting grade-level benchmarks, and Black and Latino students are underrepresented in rigorous accelerated programs. Now, a state-led recommendation to overhaul math pathways is meeting pushback.
  • The Opportunity Ticket, Opportunity Hoarding, and What We Learned from the latest Enrollment Data
    • For my own mental health I skipped the last board meeting, but by the next day a half dozen, mostly fuming, folks had reached out to me on enrollment data the district presented.  And the presumed twisting of a policy that I helped write and pass, The Opportunity Ticket(OT).   While the idea behind the policy was to allow underserved families to have better access to the schools of their choice, the presumed outcome from the data was that the most privileged families were the most active in using it, and that underserved families failed to. 

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