{"id":56980,"date":"2025-11-17T16:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T16:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/56980\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T16:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T16:15:07","slug":"oaklands-big-education-bet-empower-parents-transform-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/56980\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland\u2019s Big Education Bet: Empower Parents, Transform Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below is an excerpt from\u00a0The Catch-Up<\/a>, a special biweekly newsletter from the education news site\u00a0The 74<\/a>\u00a0about student struggles and school breakthroughs after COVID. Subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Students who took part in a high-dose math tutoring program developed by The Oakland REACH<\/a> in partnership with Oakland Unified School District improved their math scores, according to a recent Northwestern University study.<\/p>\n

Children who received at least 10 sessions through MathBOOST saw their scores go up, on average, eight points more on a district assessment compared to those who did not.<\/p>\n

MathBOOST, which started in 2023 as an offshoot of an earlier, pandemic-inspired effort around reading, culls tutors from the local community, many of whom do not have prior teaching experience.<\/p>\n

Interested parties are trained and most win paying jobs \u2014 plus benefits \u2014 with the school district. Jessica Fyles, The Oakland REACH\u2019s director of programs, said Northwestern\u2019s findings validate their recruitment tactics.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can bring in community members, parents, aunties, cousins, sisters and brothers, to improve results for other people in the district,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is untapped talent, people who have not necessarily been in schools before, but have so much knowledge of community. They know exactly what is at stake \u2014 and are ready to go all in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oakland REACH founder and CEO Lakisha Young said the model proves, too, that the people closest to the problem are the best suited to solve it. Unlike school leaders, or even teachers, parents are here to stay, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they need to have more tools, agency and power to help close the achievement gap,\u201d said Young, whose tutoring initiative this year expanded to a Fairview, Oregon, public school district and a Denver charter school network.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Oakland Unified is in the process of taking over the MathBOOST program and is committed to its growth, said Alicia Arenas, the district\u2019s executive director of elementary instruction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is something special and impactful when students see members of their community working at their school sites,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Go Deeper:<\/p>\n

Subscribe<\/a> to The Catch-Up to get more inspirational education coverage delivered straight to your inbox. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Below is an excerpt from\u00a0The Catch-Up, a special biweekly newsletter from the education news site\u00a0The 74\u00a0about student struggles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[35102,35105,35104,35103,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-56980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-district-assessment","tag-math-scores","tag-math-tutoring","tag-northwestern-university","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}