In addition to saving lives, this is why improving Safety needs to become part of the equation along with Education…

White school district understand well the need to have different tracks – even if there is not a significant black population.

It’s the black districts who are terrified of imposing standards and kicking out any who fail to meet them. This is true whether the administration of the black districts are white, mixed, light blacks or black. At least this is true since the Great Society Movement of the mid 1960s.

Previously the all black schools tended to be run by blacks who were themselves college educated and more importantly military experienced. The concept of jack booted discipline and making students unhappy was just not a problem. They’d been through it. Also the concept of some people going forward and some being culled was not a problem either. Competition was not an alien concept. Winners and losers. Losers not dragging the winners down. My family was faculty & administration in black schools K to grad school back to the early 1900s. It never occurred to them to be easygoing. It was not easy work. Their students had to be made ready for anything the world would throw at them. A lot was going on. People moved and started in new industries.

The reason the Black School districts in the USA are so worthless now but not before (Dunbar High School, etc) is this odd notion that we are supposed to keep the kiddies happy and content. No matter what, keep them happy and not protesting. But only in the Black Schools.

Meanwhile a lot is going on. The next 15 years is going to have greater change than the last 15 years. Where are the black students going to fit in? People are going to move and start in new industries I’ll bet. How are the blacks going to be able to fit into the Brave New World when (as a group) they can’t even speak English, keep a driver’s license or a credit card, and meet basic sanitation/health issues? It takes the discipline learned in the HS years to be a functioning adult. OUSD is not known to be a good teacher of that. Regardless of how screwed up the parents may be, the High Schools used to provide a common level everyone met. The Black Districts, such as OUSD and LAUSD, believe they should not impose any middle class standards on lower class kids. The prefer to “keep them real”.

Flunking out failures is a big middle class standard.

http://www.ibabuzz.com/onassignment/2011/09/07/a-closer-look-at-spending-and-test-scores-in-east-bay-schools/#comments

Take a look at Castro Valley and Fremont as examples of what can be done.

This should have happened already to compete with charter schools if OUSD had a business model.

If public education is to survive as something other than a big continuation school – the large districts such as OUSD and LAUSD must offer ultra-competitive academic schools. SF has done so it appears.

What will it take for OUSD to try this?

The failure to a school district to field segregated schools -(love using that term!) ensures this process. San Francisco of all places kept a segregated academic school – Lowell High – I don’t know what they did about the rest of the schools there.

You cannot have an “integrated” school on a large scale and still have an acceptable academic program. That seems the lesson of the 20th century. You can have a pretend integrated school such as Piedmont High or Beverly Hills Middle School or whatever. These are schools that are integrated in principle, but segregated in reality. That works when the economic barriers to enrollment are strong enough to keep the lower class out (Piedmont has no apartment complexes, for example, No Ghetto housing, Section 8 or welfare projects.)

One wonders what would happen to the Oakland Neighborhoods if OUSD announced in 12 months hence there would be a system of schools with strict enforcement of reading/writing levels that would expel any student after annual testing who scores below grade level, or a high school which required UC entrance requirements with expulsion set at having a gpa drop below C for more than a semester – along with a grade curve of even required merely 15% Ds and Fs for every class?

Those who do not enroll and remain in the upper track would be assigned to the remaining schools at OUSD. Have no affirmative action and no expectation that the policy would ever be race neutral.

Having such public schools available would (make possible) keep the desired people and their tax base in the city.

The problem is this maniacal insistence that the schools reflect the racial composition desired by the libs, regardless of the price everyone pays for being PC.

You are never going to have a algebra, calculus or advanced science class that reflect the same racial makeup of a large CA city. If you are doing classes at a large military base where the parents are pre-screened for you-know-what it’s easier to smooth all this over. We take our population in cities as we get them – so does OUSD.

For everyone’s sake it’s time to move to race neutral policy and let the chips fall where they may. OUSD is big enough to field a set of academic schools, open only to anybody who can cut the mustard. Doing so would give people a reason to stay in town.

As far as the “other” students who are not going to college – which is the majority of Oakland students – it’s time we ran schools for them that suited their needs and did not try to cram college prep down their throats.

This is mostly at the K-5 and somewhat for 9-12. Middle School is starting with a trickle. Improve Middle Schools, the same will happen there, & it will even help retain more K-5 families.

Having mixed classrooms that represent Oakland will also help those who are less fortunate: as the school can afford more, it can afford to fund more programs that support the school’s entire population.

The argument is that the options process has taken families out of their neighborhood schools and that has hurt the school. But here’s what’s true for our family and the many families that have taken advantage of the options process: we would have left Oakland all together if not for this choice. We cannot pay the extra $50,000 a year to educate both our children and live in our home here.

A lot of the young families I see moving in will probably make the decision to move not just for schools but for yards and safer streets. But some cannot fathom not living in an urban area with short commutes, good food, art, music, culture at their finger tips. For them and us (and there are a lot of us, just look how crammed the “good” schools are) the options programs is the only thing enabling us to stay and raise our children in Oakland.

I want my children to probably proclaim they grew up in Oakland when they become the well-educated adults they are set to be! Keep choice alive.