A Closer Look at African American Males in OUSD: On Course to Graduate

The African American Male Achievement Initiative (AAMAI) aims to reverse the academic and social inequities facing the 6,415 African American males (AAM) in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in seven key areas: the achievement gap, graduation rates, literacy, suspensions, attendance, middle school holding power, and juvenile detention. To complement our earlier work developing and tracking indicators in each of those areas, Urban Strategies Council offers this report to provide further insights into the status of African American boys in OUSD.
To better understand how African American male students are faring across multiple areas, we created a framework of three levels of well-being: on course, at risk of falling off course, and off course. These categorizations are based on research on early indicators of dropout risk. (1) These indicators include attendance, suspension, grade retention, passing grades in English and math, and CST scores as detailed in Table 1, below.