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 last week, and I wanted to highlight some of the schools making progress with Latino/a children, and encourage families to visit.
But before I get to the public schools showing the most progress, let me give a warning. These numbers may be imperfect since it is the first rollout, and no number can capture a school, or the variation within it. The numbers may also be distorted if a school enrolled many new low achieving students. So please take these lists as starting points and do your homework.
Digging into the new data
Everything I am showing here is publicly available on the OUSD website, though you need to poke around some. And now is the time to research and apply to schools in open enrollment. We have never had more options, easier ways to enroll, or more information about schools, so we need make the best choices we can. And there was an East Oakland Enrollment Fair last weekend and one in the West next weekend.
High Schools where Latino/a students graduation rates are high or increasing
The first graph shows schools who are showing increasing graduation rates for Latino/a students,
And the graph below shows the overall graduation rates, with the actual rates for Latino/a students. There are several schools showing outstanding graduation rates, with Oakland Charter High, Leadership Public Schools’ Oakland R and D campus, MetWest, Envision, and Unity having graduation rates of 90% or higher. And Lighthouse, Arise and MetWest have all made large gains alongside strong overall graduation rates.
| School | Grad rate |
| Oakland Charter High | 94.3 |
| Leadership PS Oakland | 93.4 |
| MetWest | 91.3 |
| Envision | 90.9 |
| Unity High | 90.2 |
| Arise | 87.7 |
| Oakland Tech | 83.7 |
| Lighthouse High | 80.0 |
| Skyline | 72.9 |
(note that gray lines mean that less than 30 students were tested, and the other colors relate to how high the rates were)
Knowledge is power
So please, take advantage of your options and the information at your disposal. There are enrollment fairs coming up from OUSD and Enroll Oakland over the next several weeks. 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 other subgroups.
You have the tools, now use them.
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