Opinion

Op-Ed: Oakland Achieves School Progress Report Misses the Mark

Published

10 years ago

October 6, 2016

By Jan Malvin and Joel Moskowitz

Confusing the public may well be the major achievement of the fourth annual Oakland Achieves Public Education Progress Report prepared by Urban Strategies Council.

This report, deemed “primarily an update on the academic outcomes for the 2014-15 school year,” offers no trends data for Oakland Unified School District-run schools.

Rather, it is the first report in the series to feature student-level data from charter schools.

Without explaining the omission of trends data for district-run schools, the report appears crafted to tell a story that compares charter schools with district-run schools.

Commenting on Oakland Achieves, the Executive Director of GO Public Schools states, “The data is at a high level to spark collaborative learning, not to pit school types against each other and draw tentative conclusions.”

Yet, this report manufactures unfair competition between the charter and district-run school sectors, relying on incomplete or biased data.

For example, out-of-district students enrolled in OUSD-authorized charter schools ranged from 0-56 percent in 2015-16 (average = 14 percent).

How fair would it be to judge performance of a sports team that recruits exclusively from within the city against one that recruits from the whole Bay Area?

Urban Strategies announced, “One important finding revealed that while charter schools did poorly in ELA testing for 3rd-5th graders, by middle school, math testing of 7th & 8th grades were much better than for district schools—a flip in performance.”

Claiming such a “flip in performance” by comparing data from two different cohorts of students at a single point in time, one set of data from English (ELA) and the other from math, is absurd.

If this observation were valid, a more plausible interpretation is that many high achieving students in district-run elementary schools transfer to charters or private schools for middle and high school.

Much higher standards—matched comparison groups, measurement of each indicator at least twice—apply before one can make causal statements about school effects on student performance.

If these standards cannot be met by design, analysts must employ statistical controls for all pre-existing differences that may affect the outcomes.

Since Oakland Achieves failed to address pre-existing student differences, conclusions about charter vs. district-run schools are indefensible.

It is essential to understand the school-site practices and other factors that underlie different outcomes.

This report does not acknowledge this shortcoming and so misleads the reader with false comparisons between types of schools.

Many factors may account for student outcomes, but Oakland Achieves addresses none of these.

For example, selective enrollment and pushout practices, described by the ACLU in Unequal Access, its recent report on charter school enrollment practices, can influence indicators of student progress (see: www.aclusocal.org/unequal-access/).

Oakland Achieves does not consider the impact on student outcomes of teacher turnover and experience; instructional practices; curriculum; parental involvement, education, and occupation; and details about vulnerable subgroups.

For example, are special education students in charter schools less diverse than special education students in district-run schools?

A final shortcoming of Oakland Achieves is that a considerable amount of data was missing for charter schools. Although the report notes the omission, it does not spell out the implications.

Missing data, especially if not random, biases comparisons with district-run schools because charter results do not reflect the entire charter school population.

Despite public claims to the contrary, Oakland Achieves has not demonstrated that charter schools do a better (or worse) job than district-run schools on any of the indicators presented.

The outcomes are different because, from the start, the students are different.

Jan Malvin, Ph.D., is a retired University of California researcher; Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., is in the School of Public Health, UC Berkeley.

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Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

3 days ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.