The Oakland Community School aimed at providing to its students a culturally relevant, experience-based curriculum that encouraged students to engage in discussion, critique, and critical thinking skills. 

Overarching Pedagogy of the Oakland Community School

Oakland Community School did not have traditional age based grade levels and rather grouped students based on their academic performance, this allowed the school to tailor each of their 50-150 student's academic curriculum to their specific needs and learning styles in classes including math, science, Spanish, English, history, art, physical education, choir, and environmental studies. 

Oakland Community School's View on Grade Levels

The Oakland Community School did use test to assess students struggling with reading, but the Oakland Community School did not use standardized testing with the exception of using it to prepare students for transitioning to public schools for middle school. The Oakland Community School did not use IQ testing. During this time period IQ testing was widely used by public schools to lump disabled children, nondisabled Black children, and children with English as a second language into overcrowded and underfunded special education classrooms. 

Oakland Community School's View on Standardized and IQ testing

While the framework of Universal Design as an anti-ableist educational framework wouldn't be developed until the 1990s a lot of the Oakland Community School's pedagogy. Children with reading and cognitive difficulties were assessed by a special education consultant who would visit the school and the results of those assessments were used to adjust their individual learning plans and their instructor's teaching strategy. Every child, as previously mentioned had an individual learning plan. This approach mirrors Universal Design's emphasis on flexible, multimodal learning environments and supporting various learning and communication styles.

Universal Design at the Oakland Community School

- Overarching Pedagogy
- View on Grade Levels
- Universal Design
- Standardized and IQ Testing

University of Wisconsin - Madison

The Oakland Community School was opened in 1973 by the Black Panther Party as a tuition-free, not-for-profit, and community-organized elementary school for children ages two through twelve. The Oakland Community School was an outgrowth of some of the Black Panther Party's other educational endeavors including the Intercommunal Youth Institute. The Oakland Community School was widely regarded as a successful endeavor and was used as a training space for local educators. The school was also in very high demand and often had waiting lists for entry. The Oakland Community School closed its doors in 1982 in alignment with the formal end of the Black Panther Party.

What was the Oakland Community School?

- Oakland Community School Pedagogy
- Ericka Huggins, Oakland Community School director

Oakland Community School as a Site of Black Disability Politics

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

The Oakland Community School was founded in part as a challenge to the idea that some youth were "uneducable." Many of the students who came to Oakland Community School had been expelled from Oakland Public Schools or were labeled as uneducable by teachers or school officials. 

The Oakland Community School as a Response to Oakland Public Schools

Ericka Huggins, the director of the Oakland Community School, was one of the major reasons why the Oakland Community School incorporated the learning needs of disabled students into their pedagogy and practices. Huggins who attended college to become a teacher had goals of opening a school for disabled children because of her interactions with Theophilis, or T.

Ericka Huggins

- Using disability as a symbol that oppressive violence has occurred
- Examples: Sierra Club, The Black Panther
- Alternatives

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