Black children in Oakland attend the lowest performing schools. And given more school closures, it is essential that we find and apply to the best schools for our children before the February 8th application deadline. If you are a Black parent and wonder whether you should look at your options, consider this statistic, 1% of Black children in Oakland public schools attend a school above the state average and making progress. 2/3rds attend a school below the state average that is going backwards. For families in these schools, many of which will close—it is choose or lose time in Oakland. I list schools below that are making progress with, or showing high achievement for Black children, take a look and please apply.
Open Enrollment is Ending 2/8
Every Oakland parent has the right to apply to basically any Oakland public school during the open enrollment period which ends on February 8th. 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, and those having the highest scores, let me give a warning. These numbers may be imperfect, 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.
It is also critical to look at mix between how well students at a school are doing (overall performance) combined with how much progress students are making (growth from year to year). And the nature of testing is that it is harder to make large gains when a school is already high performing, and “easier” when a school is low performing.
Elementary schools to consider based on Black student performance
Unfortunately for Flatland families, most of the schools showing high performance are in the Hills–Thornhill, Crocker Highlands, and Montclair top all 3 lists.
Elementary Schools to consider based on Black student growth
Montclair is further down the list, but they showed growth and also have Black students exceeding the the standards (green). Acorn Woodland also shows up on the overall performance and growth lists, and Korematsu, Cox and Franklin all have relatively good performance and significant growth. While Rise, MLK and Sankofa, all showed strong growth but still had overall very low scores.
Elementary school list with some more information are here
K-8 Schools to Consider based on growth
Lazear Charter topped math and was second in ELA growth, while Community School for Creative Education had the highest ELA gains. La Escuelita showed impressive gains in math. Lighthouse, Melrose, Greenleaf, Aspire Berkeley Maynard, and American Indian II, also made both growth lists.
K-8 Schools to consider based on performance
In terms of overall performance of African American students, Hillcrest led the pack, with American Indian II close behind, and Lazear and Aspire Berkeley Maynard as schools that made both lists.
The list of K-8 Schools is here.
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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