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. There is and OUSD enrollment fair on 1/20 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 since it is the first rollout, 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 also did look want to separate Filipino/a scores and Pacific Islanders, but there was not enough data to report anything of value.
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. Families should also take a look at the Oakland school finder.
Elementary Schools where students made the most gains
Glenview showed very strong progress in both ELA (1st) and math (3rd), MLK had the second highest gains in both subjects, and Garfield was 3rd in ELA and also showed strong progress in math. Other schools that showed progress in both subjects include Urban Montessori, Cleveland, and Laurel. Click on the chart for a better view.
Note that gray lines mean that less than 30 students were tested, and the other colors relate to how high the average scores were. The five color-coded performance levels in order are: blue (highest performance),green, yellow, orange, and red (lowest performance).
K-8 Schools
There are fewer K-8 schools in Oakland and there was not enough data to show, but families can look for themselves.
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 subgroups.
You have the tools, now use them.
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