History
The Oakland Unified School District was founded in the 19th century as part of the city's birth as a bedroom community for families working in San Francisco. Today the district includes around 120 schools including several dozen sites that have been founded or redesigned as part a nationwide small schools movement.
In 2003, the state Legislature passed an emergency $100 million loan for the insolvent school district leading to state control of the 48,000-student school system. Randolph E. Ward, Ed.D., was appointed in 2003 to serve as state administrator for the school district.
During its early twentieth century history, Oakland was one of the first school districts to use the I.Q. test developed by Stanford Professor, Lewis Terman, to track its students. Terman stated his view that Northern European whites were smarter than others. He placed his graduate student, Virgil Dickson, as research director of the Oakland schools, and the resulting tracking system placed most African-American and Mexican students in the lowest track classes
The resulting racial stratification continued through the 1960s until more African-American and Latinos began being elected to the school board and questioning the tracking processes.
Read more about this topic: Lincoln Elementary School (Oakland, California)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)