Education

On today's Your Call we’ll talk about bringing diversity into higher education. How do you do it? How do you know when it’s working? We’ll look back at the history of ethnic studies and try and make sense of the battles going on today. What does ethnic studies really mean? How about diversity studies? What has been gained by the creation of these departments and what may be lost in their consolidation?

Guests:

Oakland Unified School District has the largest enrollment of any district in Alameda County, with 136 schools and over 46,000 students. Within OUSD, about 25 percent are charter schools and this number keeps growing.

Arise High School, a charter, is inside the Fruitvale Transit Village in Oakland. The plaza looks hip and newly built. There’s a bank, senior center and a dentist’s office – not the typical setting for a high school with over 200 students. G. Reyes, one of the school’s co-principals, says Arise created a unique approach to learning.

Many public schools are coping with constant and deep funding cuts to education, and neighborhood schools are looking for creative ways to serve the needs of their students. Six public schools in Oakland now house on-site health centers for just that reason. The newest – a state of the art clinic at Roosevelt Middle School – helps kids who are struggling with the twin traumas of violence and poverty.