Individualized Education

Education needs to be individualized to engage every child and family. Smaller, personalized learning environments help ensure that all students feel safe and well known at school, and have the opportunity to achieve. In the history of the Oakland public schools, smallness has been the privilege of a small portion of our students. If smallness is an effective prerequisite that supports student learning, as research and our own community's recent work indicate, we must be sure that it continues to be an option for all students.

Individualized educational experiences for every student will be assured when...

• Teachers routinely develop strong relationships with students for the purpose of empowering them as learners and motivating them about learning and about going to college.
• Adults routinely create the conditions in which students are inspired to be academically successful.
• Students have multiple opportunities to demonstrate standards mastery including exhibitions, performances, independent and group projects, and school- and teacher-created assessments.
• Student proficiency is shown on multiple standards-based measures such as state assessments including the California Standards Tests, California High School Exit Examination, and California English Language Development Test, their completion of high school courses for state university admissions ("A-G" courses), SAT scores, high grades, and college acceptance, enrollment, and graduation.
• The OUSD central office and every school sets the expectation that every school, regardless of size, is one in which the unique gifts and talents of every child are fostered by an adult that community.
• Individualized Education Plans are not an intervention for those students falling through the cracks or with special needs but an approach to personalizing and differentiating every child's learning experience to ensure maximum academic success.
• Schools use robust standards- and curriculum-aligned assessments and data reports so that teachers have timely information about what individual students have mastered and what students still need to learn, and parents have access to information about how their child and other children at the school are doing.
  

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