Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute

Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute Advancing Educational and Economic Equity in Silicon Valley

When we began analyzing East Side Union High School District, some of the most troubling results came from James Lick Hi...
08/06/2026

When we began analyzing East Side Union High School District, some of the most troubling results came from James Lick High School, which raised a question that district-level averages rarely answer: where were these students coming from, and how long had they already been behind before they reached high school?

James Lick sits in the heart of the Alum Rock community, and the data from Alum Rock Union helps trace that story backward. Just 49.7 percent of students meet the English language arts standard, while 49.9 percent meet the mathematics standard. Alum Rock also serves a student population that is 77.5 percent socioeconomically disadvantaged. By the time many of these students enter East Side Union, they are not beginning from the same foundation as students elsewhere in the county. They are carrying years of missed instruction and institutional failure with them.

Across the city, Saratoga Elementary reports 95 percent proficiency in English language arts and 95.7 percent in mathematics, while serving a population that is only 3.8 percent socioeconomically disadvantaged. Students there begin with the academic momentum that makes later success far more likely.

It matters where a child begins. When students receive a strong foundation from their first years in school, each grade can build on the last. When that foundation is absent, the gap follows them from elementary school into middle school, then into high school.

We know the outcomes at James Lick did not begin at James Lick. They reflect a generation of students who entered school with fewer resources, who received less effective support, and who were allowed to fall further behind at every stage of the pipeline.

As such, SVEEI follows the data beyond district boundaries to understand where students first fall behind and why those gaps persist. Our work is about confronting those failures before another generation of East San José students inherits the same outcome.

In our latest analysis of college eligibility across the East Side Union High School District, we found that the charter...
07/27/2026

In our latest analysis of college eligibility across the East Side Union High School District, we found that the charter schools ESUHSD itself authorizes are sending low-income Hispanic students toward UC and CSU eligibility at nearly double the rate of many traditional campuses serving similar communities.

The district reviews and renews these schools, and sees their results come before its own board, so they must know what these schools are doing differently. The question that comes to mind is why it has not brought those same expectations, and academic outcomes to every student in East San José across its public schools. Read the full analysis at: https://ow.ly/BU4u50ZtzfZ

Over the past several months, our team examined two of the districts that sit at the sharpest socioeconomic fault lines ...
07/22/2026

Over the past several months, our team examined two of the districts that sit at the sharpest socioeconomic fault lines in Silicon Valley, Oakland Unified and East Side Union in San José, both serving communities pressed against some of the largest concentrations of private wealth anywhere in the country. What we found across enrollment, achievement, attendance, discipline, graduation, and college readiness is that this wealth passes almost entirely over the students sitting in these classrooms.

Among eleventh-grade Latino students, math proficiency stands at just 9.05 percent in Oakland Unified and 10.22 percent in East Side Union, while reading proficiency reaches only 27.91 percent in Oakland and 37.50 percent in East Side. These figures come from data points gathered through our own research, yet the outcomes they capture did not begin in eleventh grade.

As we examined the numbers more closely, it became clear that district-wide data can show the scale of the crisis without explaining where it began. The gaps appear in the earliest grades, grow throughout middle school, and eventually become the outcomes we see in high school, where too many students reach graduation without equal access to the college and career pathways that shape their futures.

That is where the next phase of this work begins. We are moving beyond district averages and looking more closely at the specific elementary and middle schools that feed into these high schools, particularly the schools where students appear to fall behind long before they arrive in ninth grade. We will examine the leadership inside those schools, the funding they receive, the staffing they maintain, and the intervention systems they use, because the source of these disparities will not be found in a district-wide average. It will be found in the schools where the gaps first take hold. The school-level investigation will identify the specific feeder schools where these gaps first take hold before students reach high school.

Swipe through the findings, and follow the full story at https://ow.ly/ICb950Zrzpf

At first glance, Evergreen Valley High School appears to prove that the East Side Union High School District knows how t...
07/15/2026

At first glance, Evergreen Valley High School appears to prove that the East Side Union High School District knows how to produce success. But once the school-wide averages are broken apart, the story changes. Asian students meet ELA standards at 87%, while Hispanic students do so at 43%. A campus celebrated as the district’s strongest is still producing an outcome for Hispanic students that ESUHSD would likely call a crisis if it represented the entire school.

Our latest data release examines what happens when a district mistakes the success of its highest-performing students for proof that every student is being served. The result is a version of success that looks impressive from a distance while racial academic separation continues inside the same school.

Read our full article now on Substack through the link in our bio.

The Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute is proud to welcome Aitanna Parker, MS, as an Equity Research Fellow.Ai...
07/06/2026

The Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute is proud to welcome Aitanna Parker, MS, as an Equity Research Fellow.

Aitanna brings a thoughtful and interdisciplinary approach to equity research, with training in Technology and Information Management, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and Information Systems. Her work focuses on how data, technology, and institutional systems shape the way students are understood and supported.

At SVEEI, Aitanna will assist with equity-centered research, data analysis, and storytelling that make educational barriers clearer and more actionable. Her perspective will strengthen our growing research capacity as we continue examining student access, institutional accountability, and long-term academic and economic mobility.

We are excited to have Aitanna join our team and contribute to SVEEI’s work across education, research, policy, and community impact.

Welcome to SVEEI, Aitanna. We are so glad you are here!

SVEEI is proud to welcome LaToya Williams, MBA, as Conference Director, joining the Silicon Valley Equity in Education I...
06/25/2026

SVEEI is proud to welcome LaToya Williams, MBA, as Conference Director, joining the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) at a moment when our work is expanding from research, analysis, and public advocacy into a larger convening strategy for Silicon Valley.

LaToya brings more than 25 years of experience in event strategy and hospitality, along with over a decade of community engagement, to the work of building spaces where education leaders, workforce partners, researchers, policymakers, funders, advocates, and community voices can move from conversation into coordinated action.

As Founder and CEO of LNW Enterprises, a woman- and minority-owned small business, LaToya has led events from concept through ex*****on, with deep experience in operational planning, client experience, stakeholder coordination, and the detailed work required to make high-impact gatherings feel purposeful, organized, and lasting.

At SVEEI, LaToya will help lead the planning and ex*****on of our 2027 SVEEI Disruption Conference, our inaugural convening focused on the educational and economic inequities affecting socioeconomically disadvantaged students and communities. LaToya’s leadership will help SVEEI build the public infrastructure for that work, turning our 2027 conference into a platform for visibility, strategy, accountability, and long-term systems change.

Welcome to SVEEI, LaToya. We are proud to have your leadership helping shape this next chapter.

SVEEI is proud to introduce Dr. Marina Luz Corrales, who joins the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) ...
06/22/2026

SVEEI is proud to introduce Dr. Marina Luz Corrales, who joins the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) as an Equity Research Fellow.

Dr. Corrales is an equity-centered researcher, educator, and librarian whose work focuses on first-generation, low-income students of color and the institutional practices that shape belonging, agency, and educational access.

With more than 15 years of experience in higher education, including teaching Chicana and Chicano Studies at San José State University, coordinating student success initiatives, and supporting research and instruction in academic libraries, Dr. Corrales brings deep expertise in qualitative inquiry, data-informed decision-making, and accessible learning resources.

At SVEEI, Dr. Corrales will support equity-centered research, assist in analysis, strengthen data storytelling, and contribute to future research releases examining student access, institutional barriers, educational opportunity, and the systems that shape long-term academic and economic mobility.

Welcome to SVEEI, Dr. Corrales!

SVEEI is entering an exciting new chapter.We are proud to welcome LaToya, Dr. Corrales, and Aitanna to the Silicon Valle...
06/19/2026

SVEEI is entering an exciting new chapter.

We are proud to welcome LaToya, Dr. Corrales, and Aitanna to the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) through our Equity Center Research Fellowship and Conference Director positions.

Their work will expand our capacity to conduct equity-centered research, build stronger partnerships, support systems-level advocacy, and prepare for major convenings that bring education, workforce, research, policy, philanthropy, and community leaders into shared action.

Each of them will help drive SVEEI’s future research releases, lead analysis, support data storytelling, and contribute to the work needed to turn evidence into action for socioeconomically disadvantaged students and communities across Silicon Valley.

Opportunities to join SVEEI will continue to open throughout the year. To stay up to date on new roles, research opportunities, fellowships, and ways to be part of our work, visit https://hootbio.com/sveeinstitute.

Over the next few days, we will introduce each new team member individually. For now, we are proud to say: welcome to SVEEI.

06/11/2026

A few weeks ago, CBS featured our Oakland data, capturing what our team at the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) has spent months tracing across district, census, and attendance records.

The forces reshaping Oakland Unified School District operate far outside the classroom. Rising rents, climbing home values, and eroding institutional trust drive enrollment decline, chronic absenteeism, and widening achievement gaps.

Four findings from our 2024 to 2025 analysis carry the story:

(1) Black/African American enrollment fell roughly 17 percent, from 10,551 to 8,724 students, as Oakland families with children under 18 held steady near 38,000, a sign of displacement.

(2) Median home values climbed from $627,800 in 2018 to $929,900 in 2024 as median income rose nearly 48 percent, the signature of gentrification rather than broad uplift.

(3) Chronic absenteeism more than doubled and peaked at 52.9 percent district-wide, reaching beyond 70 percent for unhoused students.

(4) By Grade 11, fewer than one in ten Black/African American (6.3 percent) and Latino/a/x (9.0 percent) students met state math standards, the gateway to A through G eligibility and STEM pathways.

Education does not stand alone, and no one can repair it in isolation from the systems around it. A family priced out of Oakland takes its student out of the district, and the classroom inherits conditions set far beyond the schoolhouse door.

Short-term incentives function as band-aids over a structural wound. Real progress demands that we confront the full system across housing, economic development, immigration, and education. Every band-aid applied in place of structural change silos young people like those in Oakland inside conditions they did not create. We close these gaps by working together, with the honesty to name how these problems connect.

Read the report and watch the CBS segment: https://hootbio.com/sveeinstitute

James Lick High School and KIPP sit in the same corner of East San Jose, draw from the same feeder pipelines, and carry ...
06/04/2026

James Lick High School and KIPP sit in the same corner of East San Jose, draw from the same feeder pipelines, and carry socioeconomic profiles within ten percentage points of each other, and the Math proficiency gap between them runs to 56 points, with KIPP at 64% and James Lick at 7.8%. Ten points of demographic difference produce at most ten points of outcome difference, which means the rest of that gap is a district product, and East Side Union High School District has not explained publicly what produced it.

Our new Substack piece works through the data ESUHSD already tracks at every stage, from the 64.5% of James Lick graduates who cross the stage without access to a UC or CSU, to the comparable non-charter campuses with identical SED populations like Yerba Buena and Oak Grove that outperform James Lick under the same board and the same superintendent, to the one number the district has never released, the ninth-grade A-G enrollment rate at James Lick over the last five years. The conditions that close this gap already exist inside the district's own boundary, and the question the data forces is whether ESUHSD has ever applied them to the campus that needs them most.

Read the full breakdown at https://substack.com/.

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