San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Teachers know which schools California regards as best
In Oakland and elsewhere, school segregation and its ties to ‘excellence’ are almost endemic
This month, California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond awarded over 350 California public elementary schools with the title of “California Distinguished School,” for their “innovation, talent, and success in supporting students.” In Oakland, where I live and work as an educator, and where my son attends public school, two Oakland Unified School District schools, Hillcrest and Crocker Highlands, were recognized, out of 51 public elementary schools. These two schools, in a letter from OUSD Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell, were lauded for their “outstanding work in closing the achievement gap and achieving exceptional student performance.”
But, in my mind, one distinguishing feature of these schools calls out to be recognized: their extreme segregation.
According to public data, in a district where 66% of the students are Black or Latino, these two schools serve a dismal 14% and 21%, respectively. Though 72% of OUSD’s students come from low-income backgrounds, low-income students make up just 9% and 12% of their populations, the lowest counts in the entire district. With 30% English Language Learners district-wide, only 3% and 2% of the children who show up to these schools each day are learning to speak English. And, though 15% of OUSD children require special education services, these schools only support 5% and 9% of them.
Not surprisingly, Hillcrest and Crocker Highlands are nestled high in the Oakland Hills, in extremely wealthy, majority white neighborhoods — the same neighborhoods that were designated “desirable” by redlining maps 100 years ago. According to research conducted by Integrate Oakland Schools, over half of all white elementary students in Oakland are concentrated in just six schools, five of them in areas that banned non-white residents decades ago.
But even before these schools were given the title of “distinguished,” parents from all over the city have been clamoring to get their children into these schools, and each year they boast demands rates that far exceed the number of spots they have available, with waitlists of at least 200 students for the 2019-2020 school year. Indeed, in the 2019-2020 school year, 100% of the students accepted to these schools lived in the neighborhood or had a sibling at the school — a sure sign of exclusivity in a district that allows any child to enroll anywhere. Meanwhile, 20 OUSD elementary schools that year were without a waitlist at all.
With so much disparity among OUSD schools, it is no wonder that parents from all backgrounds believe that these two schools are in some way superior. But it is not talent and innovation that is concentrated there, but, rather, privilege.
I have been an educator for almost two decades, and I have no doubt that gifted educators are doing incredible work at these schools, as they are elsewhere in the district. But why should a school be applauded for its failure to reflect the city it serves? As educational historians like Jack Schneider point out, research shows us time and time again that schools achieve high test scores when their students come from wealthy backgrounds, and low test scores when they do not. There are some minor exceptions to this rule, but data-wise, it’s clear that the resources and the student population of a school are what often dictate the kinds of success that are usually measured and awarded, not necessarily higherquality learning environments. Where is the glory in closing an achievement gap that is barely palpable in your community? When you have one or two low-income students in each class, this is hardly a great feat.
In so many instances, both local governments and individual parents and schools care for their own children while opting out of collective education. When OUSD piloted an optional equitable enrollment policy, in 2019, that allowed disproportionately wealthy schools to prioritize students from low-income communities in their application system, the two distinguished schools did not participate. Though they do not receive Title 1 funds, which are reserved for school’s like my son’s that have 40% or more students from low-income backgrounds, like my son’s school, these schools do raise funds — they’re just wildly more successful at it. A 2017 analysis by OUSD parent Trevor Houser revealed that Hillcrest had the largest PTA fund of all public elementary schools in Oakland — a whopping $623,000, or over $1,600 per student, over 10 times the district average of $156. And unlike Title 1 funds, that money is essentially unrestricted.
Of course, it is not just within Oakland but also around it that such segregation, and the essential privatization of public schools takes place. In the neighboring town of Piedmont, which is surrounded on all sides by Oakland, and where the median property value is $2 million and you are more than 10 times less likely to be Black than a resident of Oakland, all three public elementary schools in the district were chosen as “distinguished schools.” I worked in these schools for years, and I can tell you that the creativity, dedication to students, and educator excellence is no greater than that at the Title 1 OUSD school my son attends down the street from us in Oakland. Though the teachers in Piedmont are passionate, what’s most noticeable when you pass their classrooms is the level of resources when compared to a school like my son’s: the freshly cleaned rugs, the unworn books, the Chromebooks for all. Even more than this, what strikes you is the absence, just feet away from one of the most diverse cities in the entire country, of almost any Black or Latinx students. In San Francisco Unified, all five of the elementary schools awarded a “distinguished” honor have significantly lower-than-district-average populations of Black and Latinx students. School segregation and its ties to “excellence” are almost endemic.
A few weeks ago, I attended a performance at Shotgun Players in Berkeley, where, before the show began, the audience listened to a thoughtful land acknowledgement, which shared the simple facts of the actions that led to our sitting there that night, and insisted that we enjoy the evening’s entertainment at the same time as considering our continued contributions to colonization. This acknowledgement did not undo the harm that had been done, not by any stretch of the imagination. But, it did refuse to ignore it, and provided us with real, possible steps to take toward recognizing our role and beginning to reshape it.
Such acknowledgements around redlining and gentrification are less frequent, but becoming more visible. Our local press covers the effects and historical roots of gentrification. A tag on the Telegraph Ave. sidewalk in North Oakland reminds passersby: “Black people used to live here.”
Reading the California Distinguished Schools announcement last week, it felt almost criminal to me to mention the success of such schools without, in the same breath, mentioning school segregation, funding inequities and the racist redlining policiesthat are directly related to the district’s outdated system of dividing the city into neighborhoods designated for a certain school. It has become irresponsible, in a city like Oakland, where children flock each day to mostly separate and almost always unequal schools, to talk of the individual successes of schools that are allowed to keep poor, Black and Latinx, and disabled students from attending them sheerly by the leniency of district policies and the relentless gatekeeping of privileged parents. To talk about these schools as unrelated to struggling schools in Oakland, rather than as contributing to those struggles, is no longer acceptable. It’s like talking about the pyramids without considering that they were built by the enslaved.
As a career educator, I’ve been around enough schools to know that fresh paint and neatly kept grounds do not a successful learning environment make. But most parents do not know that, and when they look for houses to buy and schools to rank on OUSD’s open choice application, they choose schools that are far from freeways, stocked with new materials, and that make them feel, in some nebulous way that often seems like a dog whistle for fear of poverty and diversity, that their children will be “safe.” I can’t help but think that naming the segregation that underlies these choices is a necessary but not sufficient step towards repairing it.
My son’s school is full of tireless and innovative educators — I am constantly amazed at what they do with what they are given, and the grace and care with which they treat the wide range of children who stream through their gates each morning, of which threequarters come from low-income backgrounds and onefifth require special education services. My son’s teacher, at over 10 years tenure, is one of the most senior, not because Title 1 school-teachers are flighty, but because working in schools where children need more support with fewer resources is often quite challenging, and teachers are not usually, as Elliot Regenstein makes a case for doing in his book, “Education Restated,” better compensated for these challenges.
For these reasons, our school will only receive a “distinguished” honor if one of two things happen. The first, and most likely, is continued gentrification. White and privileged parents start to hear enough of their peers attractively frame the school as a “fixer-upper,” lower- and middle-class families, who have historically found a home in our school community, and who increasingly commute there from more affordable neighborhoods, get pushed out. We become the hills.
The second possibility is one that I am told is impractical, but which places like Berkeley (whose two “Distinguished Schools” have numbers of lowincome, ELL, and Black or Latinx students that much more closely match that of the district overall), Minneapolis, Denver, Cambridge, Mass., and more recently, San Francisco, have shown us is difficult but possible. It is for our community to acknowledge, and then, to dismantle the segregation that is an essential contributor to why many of our schools “fail” and only a select few receive awards. To give our children what they deserve: an honest conversation, and an equal chance.