By Michael Davis Dire were the predictions when our little charter school, Orange County Classical Academy, was approved over three years ago in a famously raucous Orange Unified School District board hearing.  The skepticism was forgivable then but not today. In its first year of operation, 50 percent of OCCA’s English Learners achieved English-language proficiency by the...

The Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA) was recognized this week as a  California Distinguished School, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced. OCCA, a high-performing public charter school, was the only school to receive the prestigious 2023 award in Orange Unified School District.  “Orange County Classical Academy truly deserves to be recognized as a...

In the 2010 documentary Waiting for Superman, there is an unforgettable scene, where parents and children anxiously await the results of a lottery. A lucky few will be able to enroll their children in a charter school. These New York City schools only have capacity to admit one in twenty of the applicants. Charter schools are...

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck hard back in April 2020, California’s teachers’ unions went into overdrive. The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) released a lengthy document outlining what they believed to be “Safe and Equitable Conditions for Starting LAUSD in 2020-21.” In a report published by the California Policy Center that same month, Larry Sand explained the deal...

***Watch a mini-documentary on the creation of OCCA HERE*** In barely one month, 360 elementary school students will begin attending a new charter school that offers a dramatic departure from the failed public education model in California. The Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA) will open its doors to kindergarten through 5th-grade students, and apart from the...