HOME: Oakland Equity Indicators | Education | Program Access

The Program Access Topic includes three Indicators that measure racial and ethnic disparities in AP course enrollment, Linked Learning Pathway enrollment, and suspensions. The first Indicator measures disparities in AP course enrollment between African Americans and Whites. The second Indicator measures disparities in Linked Learning Pathway enrollment between African Americans and Asians. The third Indicator measures disparities in suspension rates between African Americans and Asians.

Program Access is the highest scoring Topic in the Education Theme with a Topic score of 33.3, but the Indicator scores are highly variable. Linked Learning Pathway enrollment scored highest at 62. AP course enrollment was next but substantially lower at 37. Last and dramatically lower was suspensions at a score of 1. All the Indicators in this Theme have room for improvement, but the overall Topic score hides the especially serious disparities in suspensions. If students are suspended, they by definition cannot have access to any educational programs.

We found that African American students had the lowest enrollment with 73.7% having never taken a single AP course in all of high school. Latino students were next lowest at 58.1% having no AP courses. Asian students were doing better at only 35.9% and White students were doing best at only 29.6% having never taken an AP course. African American 12th graders were 2.49 times more likely to have never taken a single AP course than White students. Latino 12th graders were 1.96 times more likely than White students to have never taken an AP course.

We found that African American and Latino students were most likely to not be enrolled in a Linked Learning Pathway at 50.0% of each not enrolled. White students had only 36.2% and Asian students 33.9% not enrolled in a Linked Learning Pathway. An African American or Latino student in 2016-17 was 1.48 times more likely to be a non-pathway student than an Asian student.

African American students (7.3%) in OUSD were the most likely to be suspended while Asian (0.7%) and White students (0.9%) were the least likely. Latino students fell in the middle with 2.3% suspended. An African American student in OUSD in 2016-17 was 8.11 times more likely to be suspended than a White student and 10.43 times more likely than an Asian student.