The Connection Between Literacy and College Access

During a recent Oakland Unified School District meeting, on January 25th, board members discussed the Oakland Promise initiative, which aims to triple the number of Oakland college graduates in the next decade. The initiative primarily consists of school-based college-preparedness centers and college savings accounts for young OUSD students. Board members needed to decide whether to approve a board policy that would affirm OUSD’s commitment to work with the city of Oakland on the Oakland Promise as part of achieving the district’s vision of increasing college readiness among district students.

A range of community stakeholders, including Mayor Libbie Schaaf, OUSD teachers, Oakland Promise staff, and an OUSD middle school student spoke about the importance of the Oakland Promise initiative and its initial successes.

After a host of comments in support of providing district funding for Oakland Promise, a few community members expressed reservations — one OUSD staff member mentioned concern about the fact that the district was committing to financially support an initiative specifically for college-entrance when a significant number of OUSD students are not meeting basic academic benchmarks, like reading at grade level.

A few others echoed the concern that it is misguided to maintain college as a focus when the district has not allocated the necessary resources to provide a quality education that results in a high rate of student literacy.

According to Oakland Unified School District Data from the 2014–2015 school year, only 42.8% of third grade OUSD students are reading at grade level, 31.5% of sixth grade students are reading at grade level, and 38% of ninth grade students are reading at grade level.

Literacy could not be more important: students who do not meet state standards for English in third grade are four times as likely to drop out of high school. Given that high school graduation is a prerequisite of college admission, OUSD’s dropout rate (currently at 23%) is a significant determinant of district-wide college entrance rates. High school dropout is also correlated with incarceration: students without a high school diploma are eight times as likely to be incarcerated at some point in their lives.

As a proud supporter of the work of Oakland Promise as well as that of literacy-focused organizations like Oakland’s Literacy Lab, Oakland Natives Give Back maintains that literacy and college access are linked and that both require targeted, research-based resources and community involvement to be successful focus areas for OUSD.

To learn about opportunities to volunteer with the Oakland Promise initiative, go here.

To learn about opportunities to volunteer with literacy-focused organizations in Oakland, go here.

For more information about Oakland Natives Give Back, please visit: www.oaklandnatives.org