Last week was the launch of State of Black Education – Oakland’s “Keep Oakland Schools Segregated Series” that spoke to racial equity within OUSD, the history of redlining, integration and where we from there. Great School Voices also covered OUSH enrollment pilots and an SF Chronicle opinion piece on Bay Area school segregation. How ‘Mama…
education reform
The Oakland Ed Week in Review (6/20-6/26)
This week, we cover public art in action, the state’s teacher shortage and student activism. The Jazz and Democracy Project This project is a summer professional development institute with a growing network of 5th – 12th Grade teachers integrating jazz into their history, government, social studies, language arts and music classes. What can jazz possibly…
A Big Week for Oakland “Privatization”
Oakland schools were front and center in the national and local debate around, “privatization”, with a front page NY Times article and local stories on a contested visit by Steph Curry to a West Oakland district-run school. The common point shown in both of these events was the division in rhetoric, and in my view…
How We Effed up the Common Core
Flying from California to New York and stopping in the middle, I moved from relative balmy and calm debates over the common core to fierce storms. In CA, implementation was delayed, and relatively smooth, with minimal pushback and very few opt outs from testing. In other places it is very different with an astounding 20%…
What Has Worked in Oakland– Small Schools
I think it was Nietzsche who said that “every revolutionary tide eventually recedes, leaving only the sludge of a new bureaucracy”. In Oakland he is wrong. I had a chance to reminisce with some of the architects and builders in Oakland’s New Small Autonomous School and early charter movements this week (Superintendent Chacones, Laura Flaxman…