California’s inadequate and broken school funding system was on display as a bottom dweller in overall funding, funding effort, and also student outcomes tied to funding gaps in the latest report from school financedata.org, The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Funding Systems. As strikes echo across the state, districts cut, everyone fights for crumbs,…
The Oakland Education Week in Review: 3/24-3/31
Last week, listening to teachers, celebrating our champs, parent choice stories, strike impact, the Opportunity Ticket, stories from our Newcomer youth, a great look at home languages and schools, the need for better data in CA, the costs of closing the achievement gap, the reality of American education and caste, all that and much more…
No One Prepared Me for This; Parenthood in the Age of School Choice
by Dana Wellhausen When I think back on it I realize how naive we were. Before enrollment season even started we jotted down a list of public schools for our rising Kindergartener. When school tours and info nights started it felt like all we had to do was go to confirm the final order for…
Haifa Was Forced to Choose Between Her Faith and School, She Chose Faith, Kept Fighting, and Changed OUSD
There are students who admire the change and influence of great women in history. And then there are students who use their own influence to make history themselves. Haifa is one of those students. Haifa was forced to choose between her faith and her school. She chose her faith and transferred out of Oakland Tech—the school many…
Tallying the Final Costs of the Teachers’ Strike And Carrying the Voices of those Affected
Thankfully the Oakland teachers’ strike is over and kids and teachers are back in buildings. This was a painful time in Oakland for many of us and there is still healing that needs to happen. There are both tangible and intangible costs to this all—and while we can calculate the lost revenue to OUSD, lost…