Oakland Unified School District has faced financial distress, state takeover, and a variety of other struggles during the past year, all while trying to balance financial realities of declining enrollment and dwindling state funding against rising accountability matrices. As the oldest school in the district, Oakland High School (O-High) serves a diverse community: of its almost 1,800 students, 37.8% of are classified as Limited English Proficient and over 75% are classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged.
While the school is focused on providing “an excellent education to all students in a safe environment,” O-High recognized that encouraging students to pass the CAHSEE as a 10th grader was an important first step towards building academic confidence and success. During the 2010-11 school year, O-High teachers used the CAHSEEE 380 program to better target their instructional and intervention efforts.
“O-High Math and English teachers implemented CAHSEE 380 during their regular classes, and we used it as an integral part of our Saturday CAHSEE Boot Camp. We really liked that we could personalize the program by assigning students certain strands we knew they needed to work on.”
Shoshana Towers-Cabera, Assistant Principal
