Oakes, Helen

Helen Oakes was a nationally recognized activist for public education from the 1960s to 1980s. Oakes was chairman of the West Philadelphia Schools Committee from 1965 to 1970, chairman of the Education Committee of the League of Women Voters in 1965, and in 1968, she wrote The School District of Philadelphia: A Critical Analysis . From 1971 to 1980, she was a member of the board of the Citizens Committee on Public Education in Philadelphia. She was a member of the Philadelphia Board of Education from 1982 to 1989. From 1989 to 1998, she served as liaison in the educational partnership between ARCO Chemical Company and James Rhoads Elementary School in Philadelphia. She also wrote, published and distributed the “Oakes Newsletter,” from 1970 to 1989, which addressed issues affecting the Philadelphia School District.

Helen Oakes’ most notable contribution to public education was perhaps her own research and writing. The “Oakes Newsletter” tackled issues affecting the Philadelphia school district, especially teaching methods, standardized testing, technology in the classroom, school budgets, classroom environments and other social issues. Oakes started the newsletter shortly after her tenure with the League of Women Voters, when the results of some reports completed by that group returned dismal results. According to a January 31, 1989 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Oakes observed “...that predominantly black schools were getting the short end of the education stick: the worst overcrowding, the greatest concentration of teacher vacancies and the biggest shortages of resources.” It was after this that she decided to start writing the newsletter. In addition to “Oakes Newsletter,” from 1975 to 1981, she also wrote “School by School Statistical Analysis,” which provided data on enrollment, average class size, absentee rate for staff and students and reading scores for the Philadelphia public schools.

Oakes also worked as a consultant from time to time. From 1988 to 1998, she served as an educational consultant and liaison in the educational partnership between the ARCO Chemical Company and the James Rhoads Elementary School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The ARCO Chemical Company, which had a long-standing tradition of tutoring and mentoring initiatives in the Philadelphia School District, financially sponsored the James Rhoads Elementary School in an experimental school “cluster” project with the intention of improving the educational system, especially in under-represented communities.

In recognition of her work in public education, in 1982, Philadelphia Mayor William J. Green, III appointed Oakes to the Philadelphia Board of Education. She served on the Board until 1989. Oakes was an unusual board member; “...contrary to school board tradition, she represented no constituency: she spoke for no ethnic group, political party, labor union or school faction,” ( Philadelphia Inquirer, January 31, 1989). While on the Board of Education, she was also a member of the Philadelphia School District’s Desegregation Task Force and the Task Force on Teacher Selection.

Oakes’ work, especially her work on the “Oakes Newsletter,” was recognized with awards and honors from numerous organizations, including the West Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce (1974), the Institute for Public Education of Lansdowne (1975), the Philadelphia Association of School Administrators (1976), the Black Women’s Educational Alliance (1980), and the Philadelphia Council of Administrative Women in Education (1982). She also received the John N. Patterson Award from the Citizens Committee on Public Education in 1979 because she “consistently provided the community with in-depth and objective analyses relating to problems and progress in the public schools.”

Helen Oakes graduated from Smith College in 1944. She was married to Earle Oakes. They had three sons and one daughter, all of whom attended Philadelphia public schools and graduated from Overbrook High School.

Bibliography :

All information provided in the preceding biographical sketch was taken from biographical information file found within the collection (box 35, folders 27-28).

From the guide to the Helen Oakes papers, 1958-2002, (Temple University Libraries Special Collections Research Center)