THE PERIMETER PRIMATE: OUSD Alternative Schools

Sunday, March 16, 2008

OUSD Alternative Schools

This is the promised addendum to my posting on March 11, 2008 re: alternative schools in the Oakland Unified School District. I discovered seven of them by exploring recent California Department of Education (CDE) and OUSD online data.*

When the state developed its accountability program several years ago, it created a special framework of accountability for alternative schools which serve very high-risk student populations. These are called ASAM schools (Alternative Schools Accountability Model).

On the CDE’s list for ASAM * schools in OUSD are

Bunche (Ralph) Academy
Dewey Academy Senior High
Merritt Middle College High (now closed)
Oakland Community Day High
Street Academy
Oakland Community Day Middle

Rudsdale Continuation High is an additional OUSD alternative-type school.

It appears that the only alternative school for middle school students is Oakland Community Day Middle.

The percentage of OUSD high school students attending alternative schools in 2006-2007 was 6%, or 864 of 13183 students. Here is the grade breakdown: 284 - 9th graders, 249 -10th graders, 184 - 11th graders, and 147 - 12th graders.

1. Bunch (Ralph) Academy (1240-18th St.) is for “students who have not met eighth grade promotion requirements and would otherwise not be eligible for high school admission.” Total 2006-2007 enrollment was 244 students (162-9th graders, 62 - 10th graders, 18 - 11th graders, and 2 - 12th graders).

Some of these would have been the 16 year-old boys sitting in my 13 year-old daughter's classes on the first day of her 8th grade year, making her somewhat nervous. At that point, they had been retained twice. Thankfully, the principal eventually transferred them out to Bunch.

2. Dewey Academy Senior High (1111-2nd Ave.) is for students who have had “chronic truancy and disciplinary issues.” Total 2006-2007 enrollment was 242 students (43 - 9th graders, 70 -10th graders, 48 - 11th graders, and 81 - 12th graders).

3. Merritt Middle College High (Merritt Community College campus) is for “motivated students who have found themselves lost and distracted in the larger and more traditional high school settings.” Total 2006-2007 enrollment was 104 students (30 - 9th graders, 23 -10th graders, 26 - 11th graders, and 25 - 12th graders).

4. Oakland Community Day High (4917 Mountain Blvd.) is for high school “students who have been expelled from the district,” in other words, they have done something so severe that they are forbidden to attend any other school in OUSD. Total 2006-2007 enrollment was 23 students (17 - 9th graders, 3 -10th graders, 3 - 11th graders, and 0 - 12th graders).

5. Street Academy (417-29th St.) is a “national alternative school format designed to lure high school dropouts to education.” Total 2006-2007 enrollment was 123 students (8 - 9th graders, 39 -10th graders, 51 - 11th graders, and 25 - 12th graders).

6. Rudsdale Continuation High (1180-70th Ave.) is “for students sixteen to eighteen years old who are at risk of not graduating from a comprehensive high school.” Total 2006-2007 enrollment was 128 students (24 - 9th graders, 52 -10th graders, 38 - 11th graders, and 14 - 12th graders).

7. Oakland) Community Day Middle (4917 Mountain Blvd.) is the ONLY alternative middle school. It is for middle school students “who have been expelled from the district,” in other words, they have done something so severe that they are forbidden to attend any other school in OUSD. Total 2006-2007 enrollment was 20 students (2 – 6th graders, 6 -7th graders, and 12 – 8th graders).

Does it seem that one alternative school for all OUSD middle school students is enough, especially since a large number of kids drop out of high school in their 9th grade year? For instance, 300 – 9th grade students dropped out of OUSD in 2005-2006 (the most recent figures I could find).

OUSD Total dropouts in 2005-2006:

9th grade = 300 students
10th grade = 198 students
11th grade = 129 students
12th grade = 314 students

If you have further information about these schools or others, please add what you know.

*http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/ and http://webportal.ousd.k12.ca.us/sarc/. The OUSD website links to the School Accountability Report Cards (SARC's). Districts are required to provide the community with these "report cards." Their purpose is to annually provide information which allows the public to evaluate and compare schools for student achievement, environment, resources and demographics. When this research was performed in early March 2008, some of the SARC’s for these schools were out of date and/or incomplete.

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Inform yourself about the Gulen movement!

1. WATCH the Gulen Movement 101: Session One webinar presentation (1/22/2014)
2. READ the "Expose the Gulen Movement" report.
3. LISTEN to my interview with At The Chalk Face , slide marker to 32:00 min. (5/19/2013)
4. WATCH the 60 Minutes segment "U.S. charter schools tied to powerful Turkish imam" broadcast. (5/13/2012)
5. READ my response to the 60 Minutes piece.
6. READ my guest article about Gulen charter schools published by The Washington Post. (3/27/2012)
7. WATCH my interview talking about Gulen charter schools, or my presentation at LaborFest (segment between 49:18 min. & 1:07:36 min.)
8. READ my postings labeled "Gulen movement" HERE.

As one observer tweeted, "U.S. media have focused too much on the Islamic nature of the Gulen movement. Real concern is its shady dealings and improprieties."

Please be aware that Gulenists have created a large number of anonymously-operated damage control websites. They started to appear a few months after publication of Greg Toppo's article in USA Today (August 2010).

WE CAN DO IT!

Jim Hightower on populism:

"... what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government."

Jim Hightower on plutocracy:

"Plutocracy and democracy don't mix."

More Jim Hightower HERE.
Read his Lowdown newsletter HERE.

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. In a plutocracy, the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low.

On Bill Gates' ed reform

Joel Shatzky's comment on Huffington Post:

The inferior "test-prep" agenda which bases the pedagogically fraudulent "data" standardized test scores serves as a way of diverting the concerns of working parents who hope that better test scores will lead to better job opportunities for their children. If they realized that they were being given a con job, they might consider other, more "active" forms of political and social protest than simply lobbying for more money for charter and public schools.

New wealth gap report

Research and Policy Brief from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University, May 2010:

"New evidence reveals that the wealth gap between white and African-American families has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation."

You absolutely must click on this link to view the graph.

Now compare that graph to the one you'll see here.

Now read this entry.

And if you are a person who blames the schools, or believes they are responsible for fixing these problems, you can stop that type of thinking right now.

A Keeper

Posted on the Oakland Public School Parents listserv by a member:*

As a public health nurse, I am working with a generation of young parents who were drug-exposed, who are now having children who are drug-exposed, and it's a whole new ballgame. Many who were premature and will carry some deficits for life.

There are also many other families who have several generations of all kinds of abuse, not enough to eat, violence in and out of their homes, as well as chronic exposure to pollution and nutritional deficits. And there are regular people in the same neighborhoods who are just trying to live, but are poor and can't get ahead.

And there is major grief, and continuous LOSS. So many folks have lost so many folks, people around them dying, of one thing or another, every month almost. Young people (cousins, brothers, friends) dying from violent means, the elders dying too young of chronic disease and disparities in health care, among other things.

What we know about learning and development is that stressed nervous systems CANNOT learn, and that's what we have. Children with many major stressors. Abandonment, attachment disorders, fear, post traumatic stress, sadness, inability to trust or sleep. Many children. Many.

Resulting in: Lack of impulse control, lack of executive function, difficulty in expressing and controlling emotions, difficulty in sleeping, holding still, and paying attention, not to mention following directions and prioritizing tasks.

Our teachers will (perhaps already do) need more training, support, and smaller class sizes. They need major support and help with mental health issues. We really need some kind of expanded vocational track for those who can't perform even at the community college level.

We can't expect teachers to undo years and years of living. The availability of universal preschool would help. Sometimes a classroom is the first kindly, safe, structured, stimulating environment a child encounters.

Wise insights such as these are never uttered by people like Eli Broad, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Joe Williams, or any others who are of this type of school reform ilk. And this is why I know for certain that they just don't "get it." Maybe they don’t want to, OR maybe they don’t care.

* Thank you, B.R.

What Children Need

From Playing to Learn by Susan Engel (New York Times, 2/1/2010):

"Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.

…Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on."

And to tag onto that, check out this video about the wood shop at one of Oakland's middle schools.

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

OUSD Alternative Schools

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