The Educate Oakland Project provides consulting and technical assistance to help schools and organizations develop and implement high-impact math tutoring models that help accelerate student learning and help students develop a positive relationship with numbers.
Learn more about how we can help your school, district, or organization implement effective and measurable tutoring models. We are experts in:
Program Design
Program Management
Recruitment & Selection
Leadership and Tutor Training
Curriculum Design
Data & Assessments
Why Math Tutoring?
You might be asking, “why math and not reading?” or saying, “isn’t reading equally as critical?” And these are excellent questions! We definitely support the fight to help students read on grade level, but we’ve found that math and science teachers are the hardest to find and that our Oakland children are doing twice as poor in math as they are in reading.
Fear of math that is too frequently excused and overlooked, especially in Black and Brown communities. We aim to face that fear head on and build a new generation of leaders who are ready to leverage the power of numbers. Our children are headed into a world filled with numbers and various currencies that they are right now locked out of because we– adults– have not made it our responsibility to help our children develop a more positive relationship with numbers.
Oakland must be the epicenter of this movement and the beginning place for this call to action. We can no longer stand in the safety of political quarrels while this math tragedy plays out in our public school systems.
—Bob Moses’ Radical Equations
The Need
In Oakland’s K-12 public schools in 2022, about 12 percent of Black students and 15 percent of Latino students are proficient in math. And as Black and Brown students get closer to high school graduation, they become less proficient, not more.
For the last fifteen years, on average in K-12 Oakland Public schools, about 1 out of 10 Black children is able to do math on grade level, about 2 Latino children.
The country-wide picture is not much better. Nationally, 87 percent of Black children, 81 percent of Latino children, and 85 percent of American Indian children are below proficient math achievement in eight grade.
The Oakland Numbers
Below are the proficiency rates for Black and Brown students in Oakland Unified School District (data sourced from 2019). Notice the downward trend as students get older.
- Black students K-5 16%, 6-8 6.3%, 11th,4.3%
- Latino students K-5 20.8%, 6-8th 11.4%, and 11th 5.3%
After researching the challenge on the group in Oakland— talking to school principals, parents, school system leaders about student performance in math, we learned a couple things:
- The challenge, especially for Black and Brown children, has persisted for decades.
- Schools are not organized and don’t have the infrastructure to solve the challenge.
- Individual student data is rarely discussed and shared between teachers and service providers.
- Current curriculum and teaching approach is not meeting the current need.
- Math and science teacher pipeline is not flowing locally or nationally.
Project Principles
Knowing these key factors, the Educate Oakland project proposes a model to bridge these gaps and challenges in effort to accelerate student learning. There are six principles to this project:
- Don’t create something new. We work with schools and school system leaders to understand their current resources and how existing partnerships can be reimagined to help speak to the challenge students face around math learning.
- We develop and connect schools and students with young Black and Brown high school and college students, community leaders, and caring adults who serve as a student’s tutor for a duration of five weeks. Students can sign-up for consecutive sessions if needed.
- We believe in the importance of young students of color teaching young students of color. We help schools develop tutoring models that plugin during the school day, after school, and online, after 5pm.
- Our trained tutors help students with math (and literacy) comprehension as well as math skill advancement. Our tutors bring great personality and energy and are trained to implement and support a wide variety of math curriculum.
- We measure for success. After each session, student data is shared with the student’s teacher and parents along with comments from the tutor about areas of improvement and areas of challenge. This information is made available and is available for online sharing.
- Connectivity: A big part of the comfort we want students to have with math is allowing them to access help, support, and laughs, even after school. So between, 5-7pm, our tutors are available for online support or to talk about a challenge a student might be having at school.
The Mission
The Educate Oakland Project is on a mission to drastically improve students’ math comprehension and to help them have fun while learning math strategies.
Through the development of case specific tutoring solutions for historically underserved K-12 students, we seek to transform the landscape such that a majority of Oakland students are doing math on grade level, and more students will have a positive relationship with numbers.
The Lab
How are we applying the learnings from the pandemic? What are ways that we can leverage technology to meet the needs of our underserved students right here in Oakland? These are the kinds of questions that drive our Research and Development. We will use our data to inform our practices and to help develop mobile solutions that help drive positive math outcomes for Oakland students.
Did you Know?
Did you know that in Oakland about 1 out of 5 Black and Brown students can do math on grade level? We can improve these numbers.
Did you know 10/10 school principals in Oakland say they don’t have the resources or people to help solve this math challenge? We can improve these numbers.
Let’s forget for five years that it matters whether or not a student is enrolled in a district or charter school.
Let’s agree that math and reading for our children, especially our black and brown children, is the one issue we agree to solve together.