The point of which is that the USA education system is not doing badly after all as long as you exclude the black numbers. An interesting concept. My view of the Brave New World we are creating in the USA is that the blacks are being allowed to hang themselves – both in the schools and in the Black Run Cities – as the USA splits into separate societies sorted by birth with different language and mores. For all the hand wringing about how tough things are, those in the know can see that’s not true when you eliminate the “other” part of the country. Sort of like South Africa during aparthied.

Here’s the link,

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/101219_pisa.htm

In the future we might start looking for more stats that are broken out by race to see the trends.

C’mon! What about the rates of failure, dropouts etc before school alternatives exisited? It isnt like OUSD middle and high school students got ripped off in recent times! This is hostorical in districts like OUSD!

OUSD does a fine enough job of taking good little kids, and dumbing them down throughout their trajectory in OUSD.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/28/local/la-me-0528-english-20100528

Nearly 60% of English-language learners in California’s high schools have failed to become proficient in English despite more than six years of a U.S. education, according to a study released Thursday.

In a survey of 40 school districts, the study found that the majority of long-term English-language learners are U.S. natives who prefer English and are orally bilingual. But they develop major deficits in reading and writing, fail to achieve the academic English needed for educational success and disproportionately drop out of high school, according to the study by Californians Together, a coalition of 22 parent, professional and civil rights organizations.

BTW, I do agree even the good MS’s still need to make a lot of progress.

2nd, I think the Feeder schools should be broadly aligned with the Neighborhood School boundaries. For example, Kaiser being a feeder to Edna Brewer instead of Claremont is just plain weird, and probably more political than logical. In addition it contradicts the new neighborhood centric Strategic Plan.

3rd, The new OUSD Region Map cuts in between both school boundaries and neighborhoods. It also contradicts the new neighborhood centric Strategic Plan it’s a part of. & if it gets implemented this way, even MORE families are going to leave.

4th I agree with Pro-Tracking, Hills Parents, and probably even Nextset that OUSD concentrates on “equity” and helping those who are doing poorly rather than on educating all children based on their level & needs. I’m not saying OUSD shouldn’t help the poorer performing students, they should. But OUSD is almost entirely focused on “equity”, which makes it much more of a challenge for higher performing parents to get assistance. Instead it needs to retain & do both!

& yet attending public OUSD meetings those who speak up say the opposite, that all money goes to schools that already have money. ?? There’s a discrepancy somewhere here, that needs to be clarified by real examples.

5th-OFCY allocates funding the same way. & it’s not the Hills or Flatland schools that suffer. It’s the schools in between which have poor & middle class students but are not even recognized in City Govt., OUSD or even the Press. In Oakland & OUSD, you’re either rich or your poor, you live in & attend either Flatlands or Hills neighborhoods and schools.

This factually leaves out the entire Middle Class, the economic level most important for the success of the United States, and yet one gets the impression Oakland does not even recognize it exists. These families cannot afford to stay & go private unless they have access to a good public middle schools. So if they don’t they just leave, taking their #’s, tax $, and PTA money with them.

6th The Strategic Plan meetings are dominated by Equity and are taking place at higher needs schools which guarantees Equity will be it’s focus. & I understand Tony Smith is all about Equity anyway, so it’s built to get what he wants. If you think Sup Smith wants anything else, he must prove it.

Remember these points as the Strategic Plan happens. If they don’t get input from middle class or wealthy schools, these students will continue to flee, & OUSD’s challenges will remain the same.

OUSD needs both Equity AND attention to Proficient & Advanced students. It will take hard work to get that. The challenge will be balancing those two vs. just taking the easy route and doing one or the other.

- 84 percent of the Latino public schoolchildren in the United States — and 93 percent of kindergartners — were born in the U.S.
- Even among the Latino public school kids who don’t speak English “very well,” 77 percent were born in the United States, according to Pew’s Richard Fry.

Here’s a link to the report with the above stats: http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=92

OUSD will NEVER attract the high performers to its middle schools until it offers plenty of honors courses for grades 6-8.

Sup Smith – help the district get OVER its guilt about tracking. Get the discussion going. We do the right thing by NOT tracking in elementary school but we DO track in high school (AP courses, Padeia program, etc.). Why not extend it to middle school?

That isn’t Oakland’s primary problem, but if underperforming students are the majority, it makes sense that resources would shift to serve them. With the overall lack of resources, schools simply can’t do everything. Savvy parents now have options and Options to make these decisions, even without additional cost (e.g. charters).

OUSD better figure this out or it will continue to get the same money to educate kids that need more and more resources to help. Nextset might say that’s already happening and charters have just allowed it to accelerate beyond the wealthy.

Magnet schools might help, but I would not want to see the equivalent of a white/asian school and then everybody else. We’ve already got that at Berkeley and it just reinforces the inequity we’re used to.