Oakland school report on KQED
KQED aired a report this morning looking at segregation in Oakland schools. https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/08/30/two-moms-choose-between-separate-a…
Only 9.6 percent of Oakland’s public school students are white — that includes charter students. But they’re concentrated in a handful of schools, where they are the majority.
What efforts have parents made to work within this landscape? Are there any schools that parents think have been able to succeed in spite of this?
Full disclosure, I work at KQED and just moved to the East Bay and I am looking at moving to Oakland but this reporting has me thinking very hard about what that would mean.
Thanks,
Ethan
Aug 30, 2016
Parent Replies
In my experience teaching in Oakland, this is very true. In fact, I wrote a book ab out teaching there (coming out Oct 1!)
I taught in a very low-income school for 8 years and attendance fluctuated between 600-1000 while I was there. The ONLY white students we had were Bosnian refugees. Literally.
There's segregation and there's serious white flight to private schools.
(my book: www.bronwynharrisauthor.com)
I don't have any advice for you, but I wanted to thank you for posting the question and the article. The info in the article is unsurprising, but disappointing to say the least. And given that any school districts that are truly diverse probably have the same problems that Oakland has, it is heartbreaking, really. Berkeley is a notable exception, at least on paper. Hypersegregated schools are real! I teach at one.
Your question is vague. But there are lots of good schools within OUSD (we have experience with elementary, middle and HS). Some of the good ones are diverse and some are not. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're asking.
I listened to the KQED reports and was really disappointed with the reporting. (I will never donate to them again based on it, in fact) As the white parent of kids in OUSD public (not charter!) schools attending from elementary and now in MS and HS, yes, I can affirm that the schools are not perfect and there is white flight. But the report seemed to make the argument that segregation was institutionalized, that black students were specifically pushed out of schools rather than more white students going to them, and that the only solution was to attempt something similar to Berkeley (a much whiter, higher-income, less-populated city.)
White parents are "gaming the system"? Uh, that's both false and inflammatory (the seeming point of the report.) It's a fact that the more educated the parent, the more motivated they are to try and understand the enrollment process and find what they think is the best school for their child. If you can hear past the commentary present in the KQED report, you will hear that fewer white parents fled their neighborhood school for private school or another district.
As an active volunteer in all three schools my kids have attended, I wish more parents (of any race) would dig in and join their local school community and improve it--that's what happened at many of the OUSD schools that were called out as now being majority white. This shouldn't be concentrated in just a few schools. Lower-performing schools get more funding than these schools based on the LCFF process, but the teachers and administration need support. No one is suggesting that all kids don't deserve a good education, but some schools can't hang onto good teachers or staff who don't want to deal with everything involved with working at a low-performing school. We can't expect these people to be martyrs. (I'm curious to read Bronwyn Harris's book.)
I'm not sure exactly what you are asking with your question, but if it is what can you do--roll up your sleeves and help make your local school another high-performing school in OUSD.
Since you work at KQED you probably read the article that just came out on how Berkeley integrated its schools. My oldest child just started kindergarten at Malcolm X and the classes do seem real-world diverse. The school is about 40% white. (We are white.) You can look up the ethnic makeup of each school on the BUSD website. Here's the KQED article: https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/09/10/berkeley-parent-tells-how-school-i…
I used to live in Oakland and my children attended Redwood Heights Elementary. About 5-6 years ago the breakdown was roughly 50% white, 25% African American and 25% Hispanic, mixed race and other races. It was very diverse in other ways, too, with families of different socio-economic means, LGBT families, families with kids that were adopted, single parents etc. It was truly one of the most diverse schools I could have imagined. I don't know what's changed - if anything - in the past few years, but there are nor were schools out there that were not overwhelmingly segregated.
I don't think that a system like Berkeley's would work well in Oakland. There are too many poorly performing schools and not enough good ones. I know we would have been added to the white flight to the suburbs if they had tried a Berkeley system when we lived in Oakland.