Oakland’s middle school “brain drain”

Katy Murphy:

The Chronicle had an interesting story in yesterday’s paper (print-only until Tuesday) about the brain drain in the Oakland school district after the fifth grade.
According to this analysis by the Oakland school district, 28 percent of all fifth-graders — and 40 percent of those who scored “advanced” on this year’s reading test — dispersed to non-OUSD middle schools this year.
At Lincoln Elementary School in Chinatown, the city’s first public, non-charter school to win a National Blue Ribbon Award from the U.S. Department of Education, a staggering 77 percent of last year’s fifth-graders left the district, up from 57 percent a few years ago.
Superintendent Tony Smith told Chronicle reporter Jill Tucker, whose son goes to Peralta Elementary in Rockridge (a school with the fifth-highest “leaving rate” in OUSD – 44 percent), that the loss of top students was one explanation for the drop-off in district test scores at the middle and high school level.

One thought on “Oakland’s middle school “brain drain””

  1. I just noticed this link almost two weeks after it was posted. But, especially if you look at the blog discussion following the Katy Murphy blog post, it sounds so much like MMSD parents piping up, it is almost spooky. Just saying. Not that MMSD is Oakland (yet), but I could see it happening as more real alternatives develop for other sources for middle school, and especially high school, education: not just private schools in the area that try to actually be affordable, but also charter schools being bandied about.

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