Focused on students: charter and district leaders collaborate on school quality tools
Last week, over 60 parents, educators, and community members gathered to help OUSD leaders answer one question: How do we define a “quality school” in Oakland? A core goal of the 1Oakland campaign is to ensure that the district is using common measures of quality when making important decisions about managing and supporting schools – both district and charter. This convening was an opportunity for the Oakland community to help guide the development of school performance framework tools the district will use to guide accountability decisions, continuous improvement efforts, and communication with families about school quality.
It was encouraging to see both OUSD leaders and community members come to the table to learn and work together to build a shared understanding of school quality. OUSD shared the three latest school performance framework tools that will allow district leaders, educators, and families to make informed decisions that directly impact students:
Purpose: An Accountability & System Management quantitative tool used to inform charter renewal decisions in 2019-20 school year and will be used to support Blueprint planning and implementation.
Purpose: A Continuous Improvement qualitative tool aligned with OUSD’s Instructional Focus Area domains used to Inform charter renewal decisions in 2019-20 school year and will be used to support improvement efforts.
Oakland Public School Report Card
Purpose: A Family and Community Information tool, available for both district and charter schools, included in the SchoolFinder tool, that families use as part of the enrollment process to explore schools.
Several former and current school leaders and a parent engaged in a panel discussion to reflect on bright spots and pain points in previous school quality framework tools and what it will take to bring these new tools to life.
Our community also reflected on these tools and how closely they currently actually align with their designated purpose. These are three things we heard from our community:
LEARN MORE: If you’re interested in learning more about this topic and our 1Oakland campaign, I am more than happy to connect via phone call or grab coffee with you! Please reach out to me at tmaffai@gopublicschools.org.
