Eric.ed.gov – Citywide Education Progress Report: Oakland

The Citywide Education Progress Report looks at how a city is doing across three goals: (1) The education system is continuously improving; (2) All students have access to a high-quality education; and (3) The education strategy is rooted in the community. Across each goal it presents indicators of what the city is doing and how it is doing. The reports focus on education strategies for the 2017-18 school year. The analyses reflect developments through June 2018. These are updates to the original reports from the 2016-17 school year. Over the past year, Oakland has simplified enrollment and started developing a multiyear plan to reconfigure the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) through the Blueprint for Quality Schools. However, the district’s ongoing budget crisis and threat of state receivership present immediate concerns. OUSD must reduce central office spending and consolidate, improve, or close underenrolled and underperforming schools while still focusing on improving outcomes. Another key step is to improve family involvement in reform efforts so policies don’t falter from community pushback, as they have in the past. Oakland has seen some improvement in student and school outcomes, but it still lags behind state and national averages and disparities persist. Graduation rates have improved but fall behind the state by 10 percentage points. Low-income students in the city are performing worse on assessments than their peers nationally, although this metric has improved somewhat over the past five years. Students are not proportionately enrolled in advanced math coursework in high school, indicating disparities in access to high-quality educational opportunities. [For the main report, “Stepping Up: How Are American Cities Delivering on the Promise of Public School Choice?,” see ED578178.]