Oakland’s brave new world of online enrollment has made it easier than ever for families to apply to the many public school options. And even if families missed the round 1 deadline for applying during open enrollment, it is still not too late to make a choice for next year. I reached out to Enroll…
School Choice
No Love for Latitude Charter School
(A Guest post from David Castillo-Executive Director at Oakland Charters. Oakland Charters provides support and advocacy for Oakland’s dynamic public charter school sector.) After a long deliberation at last Tuesday’s monthly meeting, the Alameda County Board of Education voted 1-5 to deny the appeal of Latitude High. Amber Childress (Area 2 Trustee – Oakland) was…
School Choice Without Access is a Cruel Joke on Families
I hate the spectacle of the live charter school lottery. They want you to fill up a room, so that you show demand from families, but if twice as many kids apply as spots, half of them lose. Families cheer as their name is called, and the air slowly slips out of that balloon of…
How OUSD Can Practically Reduce Charter School Growth and Help Educators and Families
Oakland has tried and failed several strategies to reduce charter school growth. Here I offer some free consulting (“POP” the sound of OUSD heads exploding) and two practical ways the district can reduce or even stop the growth of charters here. They won’t be easy, and they aren’t the sloganistic, short term symbolic actions that…
Why Black Families Support Charter Schools; Evidence from the Latest Survey
Black families are more dissatisfied with their neighborhood school options than other groups, and the more segregated the neighborhood, the more dissatisfied they are. Those were two big takeaways highlighted in a recent Brookings Institute summary of a new survey by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.…