David Montes de Oca

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David Montes de Oca
Chief of Improvement,
CORE Districts

David Montes de Oca is chief of improvement at CORE Districts. He has enjoyed over years in public education. Montes de Oca supports the design and expansion of developing district capability and capacity as improvement organizations. He previously worked for the Oakland Unified School District as senior deputy chief of continuous improvement, and as associate superintendent of quality, accountability, and analytics; prior to that, he managed school turnaround and school redesign. Montes de Oca is a founding board member of several arts and education-based nonprofits; has served as adjunct faculty in education leadership at Cal State University; was principal at Urban Promise Academy, and a K–12 teacher for Santa Cruz City Schools across the Pasadena and Glendale Unified School Districts.

updated 2025

Contributing topics
Continuous school improvement & support
Understanding, measuring & improving student outcomes
Contributing initiatives
CORE-PACE Research Partnership
Publications by David Montes de Oca
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"Seeing the Whole Elephant"
Changing Mindsets and Empowering Stakeholders to Meaningfully Manage Accountability and Improvement
The shift towards multiple-measure dashboard accountability has potential for promoting more meaningful learning, but also comes with challenges. Lessons learned from research on CORE Districts show that a shift to flexibility and capacity building…