1. There are cities such as Boston and Chicago, and jurisdictions where school board members are appointed by the Mayor or some other elected official.

2. Serano v. Priest, 5 Cal. 3d 584 (1971)

3. The academic performance index is a rating system which assesses the performance of schools based upon the average scores received by its students on the Stanford 9 achievement tests. For information on PSAA see http://www.cde.ca.gov/iiusp/

4. Most researchers regard official dropout rates as inaccurate because it fails to capture students who dropout before entering high school. See Civil Rights project.

5. College eligibility rates are determined by the number of high school graduates who have successfully taken the courses and obtained the test scores necessary for admission to either the University of California or the California State University system.

6. For a detailed description of conditions in California’s public schools and the number of schools that may be subject to reconstitution as result of PSAA see “Who is accountable to Our Children: Conditions in California Public Schools at the Beginning of the Millennium, available at http://www.law.ucla.edu/reports517003.htm

7. In the past, the state of California has only intervened in school districts when they were fiscally insolvent. In 1995, the state took over management of Compton public schools and turned control back to the locally elected school board in 2001. However, there is little evidence that conditions in Compton’s schools have improved. See “Accountability won’t rescue disadvantaged students” 5 California Educator (June).

8. In addition to the attacks from the media and politicians, critics of Oakland’s language policy included individuals such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson and poet Maya Angelou. However, once these individuals learned that the district had not intention of teaching children Ebonics as had been reported in the press, but rather sought to train teachers on how to work with students who speak Ebonics so that they can be taught standard English, their positions were reversed.

9. Evidence that the State and Federal government is aware of the additional needs of poor children can be seen in policies such as Compensatory Education and Economic Impact Aid, both of which provide additional funds to the school’s attended by poor children.

10. As a result of a charter amendment proposed by Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown (Former Governor of California), the Mayor has the power to appoint three members to the School Board. The Mayor called for this measure to be instituted so that “genuine” reforms could be made in the system.

11. Most observers agree that while this additional support will be helpful, that it will not be sufficient to address the wide disparities in funding among school districts. For an analysis of the new education bill see New York Times, January 8, 2002. Efforts to address the lack of community organization in Oakland have recently been supported by the Koshland Committee of the San Francisco Foundation. For the last five years, the committee has developed an initiative in the San Antonio district, an area comprised of Latinos, Southeast Asians, older African Americans, Native Americans and white small business owners.

13. Even with his three appointees on the School Board Mayor Brown was unable to gain the Board’s approval the creation of the Military Academy. After several unsuccessful attempts to obtain approval from other authorizing bodies, Brown was granted approval from the Governor’s Office and the academy was opened to students in the Fall of 2001.

References

Ada, A. F. (1988) “The Pajaro Valley Experience: Working with Spanish speaking parents to develop children’s reading and writing skills through the use of children’s literature” in Minority Education edited by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Jim Cummins. London: Multilingual Matters, Ltd.

Alameda County Health Department (1998) “By the numbers: A public health dataview of Oakland” Arnold Perkins, Director.

Anderson, J. (1988) The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Blasi, G. (2001) “Reforming Educational Accountability”. Unpublished conference paper.

Brown, P. (2001) “Oakland’s schools military bearing rankles some” in The New York Times, August 24.

Bush, R. (1984) The New Black Vote. San Francisco: Synthesis Publications.

Carnoy, M. and H. Levin (1986) School and Work in a Democratic State. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Cibulka, J. (2001) “Old Wine, New Bottles” Education Next, Winter www.educationnext.org

Chubb, J. and T. Moe (1990) Politics, Markets and America’s Schools. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute.

City of Oakland (1994) West Oakland Community – Existing Conditions. Office of Economic Development.

Clark, W. (1998) The California Cauldron. New York: The Guilford Press.

Clinchy, E. editor (2000) The New Small Schools. New York: teachers College Press.

College Board (1999). Reaching the Top: Report of the national Task Force on Minority High Achievement. New York: The College Board.

Coleman, J. (1988) “Social capital in the creation of human capital” American Journal of Sociology 94 (supp): S95-120.

Comer, J. (1980) School Power. New York: Free Press.

Commission for Positive Change (1990) Good Education in Oakland. Oakland, CA.

Conchas, G. (2001) “Structuring success and failure: understanding variability in Latino school engagement.” Harvard Educational Review, 70 (3), 475-504.

Dryfoos, J. (2001) “Evaluation of community schools: an early look” http://www.communityschools.org/evaluation/evalbrieffinal.html

Education Data Partnership (2001) http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us

Ed Data (2002) District Financial Statements. http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/fiscal/fundingsummary.asp

Elmore, R. (1996) “The new accountability in state educational policy” in H. Ladd, ed., Performance Based Strategies for Improving Schools.

Epstein, J. (1993) “A Response”. Teachers College Record, 94 (4), 710-717.

Fantini, M. , M. Gittell, R. Magat (1970) Community Control and the Urban School. New York: Praeger.

Fine, M. (1993) “(Ap)parent involvement: reflections on parents, power and urban schools”. Teachers College Record, 94(4): 26-43

Franklin, J. and A. Moss (1988) From Slavery to Freedom. New York: Knopf.

Friere, P. (1970) Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum Press.

Gold, E. (2001) “Clients, consumers or collaborators? Parents and their roles in school reform” August, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.

Gormley, W. editor (1991) Privatization and its Alternatives. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Hernstein R. and C. Murray (1994) The Bell Curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: free Press.

Hess, G. A. (1999) “Community participation or control? From New York to Chicago”. Theory Into Practice, 38 (4), 217-224.

Horton, M. and P. Freire (1990) We make the Road by Walking. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

James, Donna W., Sonia Jurich and Steve Estes Raising Minority Academic Achievement. (2001) Washington, D.C.: American Youth Policy Forum.

Jencks, C. (1972) Inequality. New York: Harper Books.

Katznelson, I. And M. Weir (1994) Schooling for All. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Kozol, J. (1991) Savage Inequalities. New York: Crown Books. The importance of cultural capital”. Sociology of Education, 60, 73-85.

Lareau, A. (1989) Home Advantage: Social class and parental intervention in elementary education. New York: Falmer Press.

Linn, R. (2000) “Assessments and Accountability” 29 Educational Researcher 4.

Maeroff, G. (1989) “Whithered Hopes and Stillborn Dreams: The Dismal Panorama of Inner-City Schools” in Phi Delta Kappan, 69:632-638.

Martin, A. Marcus Garvey

Massey, D. and N. Denton (1993) American Apartheid. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Mc Whorter, J. (2000) Losing the Race. New York: New Press.

Miller, Scott L. An American Imperative. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995

Noguera, P. (1996) Confrotning the Urban in Urban School Reform” in Urban Review, Vol. 28. No. 1 pp. 1-19.

Noguera, P. and A. Akom (2000) “Disparities Demystified” The Nation, June 5.

Noguera, P. and M. Bliss (2001) “A Four Year Evaluation Study of Youth Together” Oakland, CA: Arts, Resources and Curriculum.

Office of Economic Development (1994) Creating a Community Vision: Community Goal Statements and Proposal Implementation Strategies. Report published by the City of Oakland.

Perry, T. and L. Delpitt (1997) The Real Ebonics Debate. Rethinking Schools, Vol. 12, No. 1

Portes, A. and R. Rumbaut (2001) Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Berkeley, CA: UC Press.

Putnam, R, (1995) “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” Journal of Democracy 6(1): 65-78.

Rouce, C. (199) Rhetoric Versus Reality. Washington, D.C. Rand Corporation.

Saegert, S., P. Thompson and M. Warren (2001) Social Capital in Low-Income Communities. New York: Russell Sage.

Sampson, R. (1998) “What Community Supplies” in Urban Problems and Community Development by R. Ferguson and W. Dickens. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute.

Steele, S. (1996) The Content of Our Character. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Stone, C. (2001) Building Civic Capacity. Lawrence, KA: University of Kansas Press.

Thompson, C. (2001) "Class Struggle” East Bay Express, Vol. 23, No. 27.

Tyack, (1980) The One Best System. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wacquant, L. (1998) "Negative Social Capital: State Breakdown and Social Destitution in America's Urban Core" in Netherlands Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, Vol 13, No. 1

Wilgoren, J. (1997) “Young Blacks Turn to School Vouchers as Civil Rights Issue” in The New York Times, April 27.

Woolcock, M. (1998) "Social Capital and Economic Development: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis and Policy Framework" in Theory and Society, 27:151-208

Published in In Motion Magazine May 5, 2002

• Other articles by Dr. Noguera