I can only assume such involvement constitutes your experiential basis for advising OUSD parent that: (a) “Hillcrest’s K-8 success is (not) due to special privilege,” but to “the staff and parents who work tirelessly to make the program work;” and that, (b) OUSD Parent “has parents and staff like those at Hillcrest at her/his school too.” Your comments to this parent suggest that Hillcrest’s results can be replicated at “any Oakland school.”

Your latest revelation of volunteer (?) involvement in a Oakland “Title 1, NCLB program improvement school” leaves me humble and a bit curious as to: (a) which “Title 1, NCLB program improvement school” you are involved with; and, (b) how long you’ve been involved at this school. I am familiar with many such schools and have contacts at others. If you could please answer these questions I’ll happily check it out in an effort to understand the experiential basis for your comments to OUSD parent, whose comments you label as “divisive” – while being ever careful not to “pick a fight.”

Come to think of it – we should correct both parents and children who use non-standard English in all conversations at school so that they ask questions, answer questions and make statements in complete, Standard English syntax. These items will automatically insult people, yet are the exact things we know which makes good students.

So, just as those in the middle and upper middle class correct their children, and the children correct their peers when mis-statements or non-standard English are spoken, would we then be able to do the same with those families that do not come from the same background, who want their kids to attend schools in an upper middle class neighborhood?

My daughter attends one of the “Hills Schools.” We are not an upper class family, however, we educate our only child as though we were. Her friends correct each others’ English and misinformation.

I would gladly accept our “fair share” of reduced price school lunch kids, kids of color and those children whose parents did not graduate high school in our school IF we could make every student speak in Standard English syntax, have the ability to transfer students whose parents do not get them to school on time (for the parents who drive their kids, not the kids on public transportation) and if parents do not make sure that their children complete their homework on time correctly.

Only when we have the courage to set the same expectations for ALL OUR CHILDREN will we have educational success for all our children.

Yours is a solution that commonly gets suggested which MIGHT work in a district that has a VERY LARGE middle-class enrollment, making middle-class values dominate, but that isn’t OUSD. We’re not balanced that way; we’re bottom heavy.

If all the schools in Oakland were heterogeneously homogenized, all OUSD schools would be 64% Free/Reduced Price Lunch, 13.7% Asian, 6.2% White, 36.5% Latino and 36.3% African American.

A 30-student class would have 19 low income kids and 11 non-low income kids (and the majority of those families would be a long way from being affluent). The class would have 11 Latino kids, 11 African American kids, 4 to 5 Asian kids, 1 or 2 White kids, and 2 “Other” kids. The average educational level attained by the parents would be high school graduation, and a couple of college classes taken at some point.

The average class of students that would be created won’t be one that is made up of kids with mostly professional parents busily doing all of the PTA and teacher support along with general advocacy for the few other parents who don’t/can’t. That is the setting that might help underclass students, if there were only a few of them present.

Even if OUSD bussed and balanced things perfectly, the kids and parent sensibility from the lower income groups would dominate. Of course, this is all connected to why OUSD elementary schools are more tolerable to higher income families and why the secondary schools are not. It is the eventual departure of higher income families from OUSD (by those who haven’t entirely shunned the schools) that makes OUSD so bottom heavy. The population of Oakland looks very different than OUSD.

Our neighbor to the north (Berkeley Unified), for example, has 41% Free/Reduced Price Lunch, 8% Asian, 41% White, 19% Latino and 25% African American. The average parent ed. level is 2.73. It’s a different group.

Back to the drawing board…

Of course it will never happen. It’d be political suicide. Only a court order could make it so.

re: “Perhaps your comments would be more Realistic if you came down to town from your school on the hill to practice your ‘making positive change’ preach under less positive circumstances?” – yes, I am currently doing this, are you?

re: “inspire you to learn by practicing what you preach at “any” Oakland school, NOW whose being unrealistic?” yes, doing this as well at a Title 1, NCLB program improvement school, are you?

You are the one being divisive in your efforts to “pick a fight” rather than focus on making positive changes. For this, I feel sorry for you.