Most public schools in Oakland are operated by the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), which covers the entire city of Oakland; due to financial troubles and
administrative failures, it has been in receivership by the state of California
since 2002. The Oakland Unified School District (2006–2007) includes 59
elementary schools, 23 middle schools, 19 high schools, with 9 alternative
education schools and programs, 4 adult education schools and early childhood
education centers at most of the elementary schools There are 46,000
K–12 students, 32,000 adult students, and 6,000 plus employees.[ Overall, OUSD
schools have performed poorly for years. In the 2005 results of the STAR
testing, over 50 percent of students taking the test performed "below basic,"
while only 20 percent performed at least "proficient" on the English section of
the test.Some individual
schools have much better performance than the city-wide average, for instance,
in 2005 over half the students at Hillcrest Elementary School in the Montclair upper hills
neighborhood performed at the "advanced" level in the English portion of the
test, and students at Lincoln Elementary
School in the Chinatown neighborhood performed
at the "advanced" level in the math portion.
Oakland's three largest public high schools are Oakland High School, Oakland Technical High School,
and Skyline High School.
Oakland Tech has various academies, including its much renowned Engineering
Academy, which sent more girls to MIT in 2007 than any other public school west of the
Mississippi.There are also numerous small public high schools
within Castlemont Community of Small
Schools, Fremont Federation of High
Schools, and McClymonds Educational Complex,
all of which were once single, larger public high schools that were reorganized
due to poor performance (Castlemont High School, Fremont High School, and McClymonds
High School, respectively).
25 public charter schools with 5,887 students operate outside
the domain of OUSD. One, North Oakland Community Charter School (NOCCS), an
elementary and middle school, is one of the few public progressive schools in
the country. Lionel Wilson College Prep Academy and Oakland Unity High School have
been certified by the California Charter Schools Association.] Other charter
schools include the Oakland Military Institute, Oakland School for the Arts, Bay
Area Technology School, and Oakland Charter Academy.
There are several private high schools. Notables include the secular The College Preparatory School and Head-Royce
School, and the Catholic Bishop O'Dowd High School, Holy Names High School and St. Elizabeth High
School. Catholic schools in Oakland are operated by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland also include 8 K–8 schools (plus 1 in Piedmont on the Oakland city
border). Northern Light School is a private nonprofit elementary and
middle school. Bentley
School is an Independent Co-educational K–12, college preparatory school,
located on two campuses in Oakland and Lafayette, California.
Oakland is also the home of the headquarters of the University of California system, the University of California Office of the PresidentIn 2001, the SFSU Oakland Multimedia Center was opened, allowing San Francisco State University to conduct classes near downtown OaklandThe Oakland
Higher Education Consortium and the City of Oakland's Community and Economic
Development Agency (CEDA) opened the Oakland Higher Education Center downtown in
2002 to provide "access to multiple higher education service providers within a
shared urban facility." Member schools include primary user California State University,
East Bay as well as Lincoln University, New College of California, Saint Mary's College of
California, SFSU Multimedia Studies Program, UC Berkeley Extension, University of
Phoenix and Peralta Community College District.
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