About the Author: Sophia Sobko is a former teacher and current graduate student at UC Berkeley. Last Friday evening E14 Gallery in Downtown Oakland buzzed as 7th and 8th graders from Lighthouse Community Charter School shared their research, artwork, and writing on gun-related violence in Oakland. The exhibit was the culmination of a year of…
School Choice
Why I Re-joined the NAACP; Confessions from a Prodigal Son
Black folks are still catching hell. At district schools, charters, private schools, in the Flatlands and the Hills, we are catching hell. It may be a different hell, “the sunken place” where we see our children’s ambitions die a slow death by a thousand sleights, checking their identity at the schoolhouse door or fighting against…
Jordan 4s: A Trip to a Better Me
By Ashley Mendez Back to El Salvador I made my way to the hammock that had all of the colors of the rainbow on it. I laid down on it and saw the branches of the coconut trees dancing back and forth from the breeze that moved west. The cows were mooing and the birds…
The Debate We Need Is Not About School Choice, It’s About Access and Quality
As a long time education reformer, I couldn’t care less about “school choice.” And focusing on “choice” by itself, doesn’t necessarily help kids or increase equity. Most importantly, that’s not how I hear families describe what they want, which should be our focus. Sadly though, parents and families are more often positioned as props than…
Privileged Oakland Parents Need to Clean Their Own House Before They Meddle in the Deep East
It was a heartfelt moment recently when a member of the Alameda County school board asked the question that many of us were thinking, why are some Oakland families so opposed to charter schools in Deep East Oakland. A question doubly important, because there are some serious hostile environment issues playing out at the Hills…