Comments on: OUSD open thread

By: len raphael

len raphael — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:56:18 +0000

Let’s start a betting pool on when the Merritt Bakery goes belly up.

My guess is December 31 2010.

What continues to amaze me is how our elected officials consider the RDA funds to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Unlimited, free money.

By: Paul Vetter

Paul Vetter — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:38:16 +0000

Hey —
I’m going to shamefully threadjack this thing. Not much traffic here lately, but you never know if I’ll catch someone who cares about Oakland public schools. Please check out our website for a charity bike ride to raise money and raise spirits about Oakland public education.
It’s Ride for a Reason: California Public Education

http://rideforareason.dojiggy.com/index.cfm?PageID=63986

We’re going to ride from Oakland to Sacramento, meet some state legislators, collect some pledges, make some community. We benefit Claremont Middle School and Oakland Technical High School PTAs.
Claremont Middle School has made solid progress over the last couple of years as more local parents get involved. New principals have brought new commitment to success. As a neighbor and parent, I have seen really positive progress in the test scores, student body pride and behavior, neighborhood, and campus appearance. Give us some money to keep our momentum going. Or come ride with us. This stuff requires time, money, blood, all that. (We hope not to do too much bleeding on the road to Sacramento.)

By: Jenny

Jenny — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:50:05 +0000

I am an Edna Brewer alum, class of ’07. I was a student during the years of Ms. Marantz and she was a good principal, she walked around during lunch to check what students were doing, sometimes she would even start conversations with students, she also really liked us to show off our school pride by shouting “Edna Brewer Panther Pride” during school assemblies. Those were the days, students loved most teachers, teachers loved most students, fights were VERY rare, but disobedience was somewhat of an issue. All teachers had a system of handling those kind of situations: warning, phone call home, detention, going to another teacher’s classroom, speaking with the prinicpal or vice principals. There was a separation of students, we were put into seperate buildings. There was the main building/60 wing (6th grade students), 70 wing and the 80 wing (alternated every year between 7th and 8th graders). Two groups from each grade, each group would have the same teachers and the same students, so if I was in group 1, then I wouldn’t have the same teachers as a student from group 2. They weren’t called group 1 and group 2, they had way better names like Pride, Success, Pilot, Transformers, it varied each year. When I saw that Edna Brewer topped Montera and Bret Harte, I was a bit surprised, I know students that went to Montera and Bret Harte and they are very smart, but that doesn’t mean that Edna Brewer isn’t full of smart students. I know somebody that goes MIT that went to Montera, another person that goes to Stanford that went to Bret Harte, and another that goes to Brown and went to Bret Harte all of them graduated from Skyline High last year, by the way.
Now I am a junior at Skyline High School. I was also very surprised to see that we topped Tech and oHigh because there are some smart cookies at that school. Skyline has way too many students (2100 students) but I understand because it is around a 45-acre school. The campus is so big that it’s very easy to cut, and lazy security guards don’t help that fact either. We haven’t had the same principal for a couple of years, and even this year, Ms. Hansen is only staying a year, she taught at Skyline about 40 years ago and has come out of retirement to help us out for a year, I’m glad she’s here. Skyline needs more teachers and counselors because there are not enough for 2100 students. 4 counselors for 2100 students?? I don’t think so!! Our athletic department is very strong though, we have tennis (I’m in varsity tennis), basketball, football, softball, baseball, volleyball, badminton, golf, track, cross country, soccer, and more. We have a pretty good library too, over 2000 books.
I went to Lakeview Elementary from kindergarten until the 4th grade. I love that school, when you first see the school, it has bushes that spell out Lakeview, which is nice to look at. The teachers were really cool, after school programs were fun, the play structures were really fun, good exercise too. Academics is good, I could read at around a 4th grade level when I was in the 2nd grade, learned how to multiply and divide by the 3rd grade (but my grandma played a major role in that) and it was just a fun place to be at.
For 5th grade, I went to Bella Vista Elementary. It was kind of a dirty school, dirty bathroom, dusty hallways, dark settings which can really creep young kids out. Academics there was pretty good too, I learned a far amount my 5th grade year. I wished that school was in a different part of Oakland because that part was not exactly safe, nothing ever happened when I was there, but it looked like something could’ve. There was a typing class, depends on which day your teacher chose to go, where I learned how to type. The software that we used was fun and easy. “I’m sorry, there are no more misspelled words” was what the software would say when you finished typing and made no errors, six years later, and I still remember. The after school programs were fun, too.
I’ve read most of the comments and noticed that they were from adults, I just thought somebody should write from a student’s point of view.

By: livegreen

livegreen — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:40:40 +0000

Good to hear about Claremont, and I too hope this brings positive changes there. Then kids from Chabot and other Claremont feeders won’t all transfer to Brewer. Besides a little positive academic competition between schools might benefit all…

BTW, how is this Peace Makers program they brought in? Is it providing results both for security and mentoring (as they advertise)? Or is it succeeding in just one or the other, if at all?

By: Sara

Sara — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:53:09 +0000

The new principal is Kenya Crockett and there is a new AP. This might help turn it around. David Chambliss was really ineffective and seemed to be afraid to offend the parents of the students who were the worst behaved. The poor English teacher who quit probably got no help from the administration who was afraid to take a hard line. I worked there when David came on board and his first year there was an exodus of teachers due to lack of support. The classroom I was in didn’t have any internet access as the students had ripped them out of the walls but they were never repaired. There was no phone access to the office because the students kept cutting the phone wire. They roamed the halls at lunch which other classes were in session because the security guards didn’t work at lunch. The cell phone thing was out of control but teachers had no power at all to enforce the rules.
Hopefully the new principal will have the guts to enforce the rules and not be intimidated by the parents of the children causing the problems. It would be wonderful if the parents of Chabot children would all send their kids there, not just a few of them. I look forward to seeing the changes in Claremont.

By: Ralph

Ralph — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:35:38 +0000

here is a program that seems to produce some results

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/06/experience_corpsa_program_that.html

By: Deckin

Deckin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:58:33 +0000

Livegreen,

That’s exactly the kind of tracking I’m suggesting. You seem to worry that we’ll have kids ostensibly in the same grade when everyone knows that aren’t at the same level. Well, guess what, we have it now, at every level of education. Tell me that a bachelor’s degree from Chico St., Berkeley, and Oxford are all on a par and I want to know what you’re smoking. So why not just make what’s obvious open and up front? Why must we have one kind of degree? England accomplishes this already with different bachelor’s degrees (First, various degrees of First, Seconds, and on). We should do the same starting probably in high school. That’s what’s done in every other country.

Now, one thing that I would want to keep is the amazing openness of the US system. That is, there are more than enough second chances. So if we keep the Community College transfer system in place, you have a safety valve for all those either erroneously placed in high school, or who were easily college material but were too busy getting stoned or playing video games in those formative years. That covers more than a few very famous scientists and is one of the reasons for this country’s prowess. But so long as the safety valve is there (unlike in Europe and Asia where your future really is set in cement at an early age), then track, track, track.

By: Ralph

Ralph — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:09:44 +0000

livegreen, will come back to your pts in a bit, but you to the tracking I agree that this is a must. Like noted earlier, parents do this when they opt to buy into particular school districts.

All schools should offer both regular and advanced and AP courses at each grade level. But the regular classes should not be below grade appropriate. If you spend some time at O-High you will quickly realize that the regular 9th grade class is far from 9th grade material, but at the same time there are a high number of students operating at the 4th and 5th grade level. There are 11th grade history books which spend an inordinate amt of pgs on how to write a 7th grade essay.

I am no fan of teacher unions as they tend to be resistent to change, but they do protect teachers from vindictive adminstrators and they guarantee a fair pay. I don’t know if it happens in OUSD but I do know that in some east coast school district some administrators gave excellent teachers poor ratings because they may not have liked the way the teacher dressed one day.

How would you go about determining teacher pay. As a rule, we pay for results, but when much of a student’s performance is determined by factors outside of the classroom how do you create a system which fairly compensates without penalizing them for poor results beyond their control.

By: livegreen

livegreen — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:56:34 +0000

Deckin, Re. your solutions, I’m willing to take your word for these based on your experiences, as I don’t have a background in schools and education. Re. the teachers unions, of course banning them outright might not be possible, but moderates including our President seem willing to challenge the unions steadfast support of the status quo (for the reasons you mention).

BTW, I’ve heard even PS teachers tell me about how the status quo doesn’t work. For example I met one who teaches in Contra Costa but lives in Oakland, who would prefer to teach in Oakland but can’t because she’d loose all her seniority. ?? Oakland is losing good teachers because, like the City Govt., it’s based on seniority, not ability & success.

Re. your point 2, this also applies to electives. The love of electives apply to all students, even those who need extra-time spent on basic education.

Re. your point 3, “place them with students who are at their cognitive level.”, how would this work? For example where I went to PS on the east coast they did this by having 3 tiers of classes (level I, II, & III) IN ADDITION to AP for Jr. & Sr. year. So the kids who knew nothing about a subject were put in levels I and II. Mean-while they were supposedly in the same grade as levels III and AP, even though they were years behind.

This allowed a school to keep passing kids while learning less! (And this was in a “good” school district). Of course the only alternative to this system would be to fail a lot more kids, and run the risk of more dropouts. On the other hand, this would be bringing the tracking out into the open, as you mention, and the parents with students in level III and AP might stay committed to the schools.

Is this the type of thing you’re talking about, or something else?

By: livegreen

livegreen — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:33:04 +0000

Ralph, BTW, I made some more inquiry and found out that BOTR’s director was one of the on-sight counselors for several years for Brewer, and since BOTR does the same in a more in-depth way, the relationship has both existed for several years now and is expected to continue into the future. So some solidity there.

The after-school portion is funded by an additional group, Safe Passages, and they recently opened up another after-school program at Frick Middle School, funded by the same. So it seems the after-school funding is also stable, though they want to continue to expand it for both the reasons you mentioned, and so they can extend the work to other schools.

Re. families, the ones I spoke with at their completion ceremony seemed to care very much. Some fathers were there, but most were moms, and mentioned the positives I already laid out in my previous post. Several parents mentioned they’d like to see the program extend into high school so the boys can continue the progress they’d made, and receive the benefits of positive peer pressure that they’re finding amongst each other with the support of BOTR.

BOTR has an information session coming up this Sunday (info & first small fundraiser) if you want to find out more. Details on their website at http://www.brothersontherise.org