Ad Hoc Committee on Student Assignment

1
Ad Hoc Committee on Student Assignment

• September 14, 2009

2
Tonights Objectives

• Narrow number of student assignment boundary
  options for deeper exploration.
• Focus on attendance areas or zones?
• Provide feedback on elements to include in a
  student assignment system.
• One or multiple diversity characteristics?
• Maximize diversity, proximity, choice?
• Guidance on next steps and the timeline for
  approving a new student assignment system.

3
Overview of Tonights Presentation

• Quick review of last years work.
• Approach to developing potential options
• Creating boundary options
• Exploring student assignment systems.
• Potential Options.
• Confirm next steps and timeline.
• Discuss a community engagement plan.

4
Overview of Tonights Presentation

• Quick review of last years work.
• Approach to developing potential options
• Creating boundary options
• Exploring student assignment systems.
• Potential Options.
• Confirm next steps and timeline.
• Discuss a community engagement plan.

5
All presentations are available on the SFUSD web
site

• www.sfusd.edu
• http//portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page
  policy.placement.assignment

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Foundation

• The Board sees the achievement gap as the
  greatest civil rights issue facing the District
  today.
• Student assignment should support the
  implementation of the Boards equity-centered
  strategic plan - Beyond the Talk Taking Action
  to Educate Every Child Now.

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Our Current Assignment System

• The current process, in place since 2001, is
  designed to
• Give parents choice
• Ensure equitable access and
• Promote diversity without using race/ethnicity.
• Any child can apply to any school in the
  District.
• When there are more applicants than seats
  available, a diversity lottery assigns students
  to one of their choices.
• Students who do not get one of their choices get
  offered the school closest to where they live
  with space.
• Other features waiting pools, open enrollment,
  appeals.

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Why Redesign Student Assignment?

• The current student assignment plan has not met
  SFUSDs longtime desegregation goals of reducing
  racial isolation and improving educational
  opportunities and outcomes for all students.
• A quarter of our schools have more than 60 of a
  single racial/ethnic group.
• The achievement gap (the discrepancy between the
  academic proficiency of students) has persisted
  for African American, Latino, and Samoan students.

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Why Redesign Student Assignment?

• Boundaries have not been revised since the early
  1980s since then SFUSD has closed, opened,
  merged, and redesigned schools.
• Some schools are under-enrolled while others are
  over-enrolled.
• The current assignment process has different
  rates of participation by racial/ethnic group,
  and many families report finding the current
  system time consuming, unpredictable, and
  difficult to understand.

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Steps in Developing a New System

• Analyze current conditions.
• Develop priorities.
• Design and analyze different options.
• Approve a new student assignment system.
• Build the infrastructure to support the new
  system.
• Rollout the new student assignment system.

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Boards Priorities for Student Assignment

• Provide equitable access to the range of
  opportunities offered to students.
• Reverse the trend of racial isolation and the
  concentration of underserved students in the same
  school.
• Provide transparency at every stage of the
  assignment process.

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Complex No Simple Solution

• Diversity patterns vary throughout the City
  (academic linguistic race/ethnicity
  socio-economic).
• Applicant pools are not diverse, and all families
  do not participate in the current system.
• There is a non-uniform distribution of programs
  throughout the city.
• Priorities require a multidimensional approach
  student assignment is one part.

13
Complex No Simple Solution

• Student assignment has to be supported by
• Strategic placement of programs and services that
  attract and support diverse learning environments
  and provide PreK-12 instructional coherence.
• Targeted outreach and recruitment designed to
  create diverse learning environments.
• Strategic transportation policy and
  infrastructure.

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Complex No Simple Solution

• The focus tonight is on
• the student assignment system!

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Overview of Tonights Presentation

• Quick review of last years work.
• Approach to developing potential options
• Creating boundary options
• Exploring student assignment systems.
• Potential Options.
• Confirm next steps and timeline.
• Discuss a community engagement plan.

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Our Approach

• Lapkoff Gobalet Demographic Research, Inc.
• Completed a demographic study of school age
  children in San Francisco (Census data and SFUSD
  student data).
• Detailed maps and data available on the web.
• http//portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page
  policy.placement.assignment.
• Explored different boundary scenarios.

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Our Approach

• Working with a group of researchers who helped
  Boston public schools and NYC public schools
  develop student assignment systems, we used
  historical data about parents choices to start
  exploring student assignment systems.
• Tonights feedback will enable the exploration to
  continue.

Clayton Featherstone Stanford
Muriel Niederle Stanford
Atila Abdulkadiroglu Duke
Parag Pathak MIT
Alvin E. Roth Harvard
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Overview of Tonights Presentation

• Quick review of last years work.
• Approach to developing potential options
• Creating boundary options
• Exploring student assignment systems.
• Potential Options.
• Confirm next steps and timeline.
• Discuss a community engagement plan.

19

• Jeanne Gobalet, Ph.D.,
• Lapkoff Gobalet Demographic Research, Inc.

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Explored

• Boundaries surrounding individual schools
• Attendance Areas.
• Boundaries surrounding multiple schools
• Small Zones.
• Large Zones.

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Guidelines for Drawing Attendance Areas

• School capacities and locations.
• Fall 2008 student residence patterns.
• Students from new housing.
• Geographic barriers (highways, busy
  thoroughfares, mountains).
• Academic/linguistic/racial/socioeconomic
  diversity.
• Contiguity (avoid satellites/islands).

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K-12 SFUSD Students, Fall 2008
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K-5 Enrolled Outside SF City Planning Neighborhood
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Elementary Resident Counts Capacity
Based on home addresses, not enrollment. Currently
there are surplus seats in the southeast, but
there would not be enough space if all students
who live there attended a school in the southeast.
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Enrollment Projections New Housing

• Looked at currently-planned new housing to be
  built over the next several decades.

• Bayview Hunters Point
• 3,700 units
• 1,188 K-12 students expected
• Expected completion 2024
• Mission Bay
• 1,100 more housing units
• 66 more K-12 students expected
• Under construction
• Treasure/Yerba Buena Island
• 7,700 housing units
• 1,400 K-12 students expected
• Expected completion 2034
• Visitacion Valley
• 1,600 housing units
• 880 K-12 students expected
• Expected completion by 2030

• Transbay
• 2,600 housing units
• 640 K-12 students
• Expected completion 2025
• Market Octavia
• 2,200 new units by 2035
• 297 K-12 students in 2035
• Expected completion after 2035
• Hunters Point Shipyard
• 11,500 units
• 5,200 K-12 students in 2035
• Expected completion after 2035

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Enrollment Projections New Housing
K-12 student projections based on SFUSD student
yields from comparable housing, by type of unit
and market rate/BMR.
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Key Findings

• District-wide, school capacity exceeds enrollment
  at the elementary and middle school levels.
• 2,300 more seats than elementary students.
• 1,800 more seats than middle school students.
• There is a geographic mismatch between where
  students live and where schools are located.
• Southeast is the most densely populated part of
  City (more students than seats).
• The north and west is not as densely populated
  (fewer students than seats).

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Key Findings

• The majority of students go to a school outside
  their San Francisco City Planning neighborhood.
• 36 attend a school in their SF City Planning
  Neighborhood.
• 68 attend a school in their SF City Planning
  Neighborhood or an adjacent area.
• Little enrollment growth forecasted in next 3-4
  years from new housing.

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Diversity Socioeconomic
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Diversity Linguistic
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Diversity Academic
Based on SFUSD students home addresses, not
school enrollment.
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Diversity Race/Ethnicity
Based on SFUSD students home addresses, not
school enrollment.
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Key Findings Attendance Areas

• Diversity patterns vary throughout the city
  (academic linguistic racial/ethnic
  socioeconomic).
• Attendance areas may reverse the trend of racial
  isolation and the concentration of underserved
  students in the same school in some areas, but
  not city-wide.

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Guidelines for Drawing Zones

• Assume the current configuration of programs
  could change to ensure equitable access and
  instructional coherence.
• Make sure there is enough capacity to accommodate
  all K-12 students living in the zone (sufficient
  of elementary, middle, and high school seats).
• Avoid geographic barriers (highways, mountains).
• Maximize academic/linguistic/racial/socioeconomic
  diversity.
• Contiguity (avoid satellites/islands).

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Challenges Drawing Zones

• Diversity patterns vary across the City.
• Highways 101 and 280 are barriers in the
  southeast.
• Mountains form a geographic barrier in the center
  of the city.
• There are few direct routes between the east and
  the west.
• The distribution of K-12 schools constrains the
  number and shape of feasible zones.

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Key Findings Large Zones

• Large zones present significant access problems
  given the terrain and lack of direct routes in
  the City.
• The larger the zone, the greater the opportunity
  to create diverse zones. However, student choices
  within zones may not reverse racial isolation and
  the concentration of underserved students.
• Assigning students without a choice system may
  reverse racial isolation and the concentration of
  underserved students, but
• would create uncertainty regarding which school a
  student would get assigned
• some students in the zone would have to travel
  further to school than others and
• would require significant investment in
  infrastructure (e.g., transportation, moving
  programs, etc.)

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Key Findings Smaller Zones

• Small zones may reverse the trend of racial
  isolation and the concentration of underserved
  students in the same school in some areas but not
  city-wide.
• The more zones there are the more difficult it
  is
• to ensure sufficient seats for all elementary,
  middle, and high school students in the zone and
  
• to replicate program offerings and PreK-12
  instructional coherence in each zone.
• The smaller the zones, the closer they become to
  attendance areas.

44
Feedback During Discussion

• Tonights Objectives
• Narrow number of student assignment boundary
  options for deeper exploration.
• Focus on attendance areas or zones?
• Provide feedback on elements to include in a
  student assignment system.
• One or multiple diversity characteristics?
• Maximize diversity, proximity, choice?
• Guidance on next steps and the timeline for
  approving a new student assignment system.

45
Overview of Tonights Presentation

• Quick review of last years work.
• Approach to developing potential options
• Creating boundary options
• Exploring student assignment systems.
• Potential Options.
• Confirm next steps and timeline.
• Discuss a community engagement plan.

46
Exploring Assignment Systems

• Explored draft attendance area boundaries.
• Boundaries not finalized draft provides
  preliminary insights into potential implications.
• Required program needs for Special Education and
  English Learner students.
• Younger siblings.
• Biliteracy and immersion programs.
• Attendance area assignments.

47
Exploring Assignment Systems

• Redrawing the attendance areas and assigning
  students to their attendance area school could
  decrease racial isolation and the concentration
  of underserved students in the same school.

Schools with more than 60 of a single racial/ethnic group Schools with API State Rank of 1 and more than 60 of a single racial/ethnic group
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Exploring Assignment Systems

• Redrawing the attendance areas and assigning
  students to their attendance area school could
  decrease racial isolation and the concentration
  of underserved students in the same school.

Schools with more than 60 of a single racial/ethnic group Schools with API State Rank of 1 and more than 60 of a single racial/ethnic group
Actual Round 1 2008-09 SY 15 6
49
Exploring Assignment Systems

• Redrawing the attendance areas and assigning
  students to their attendance area school could
  decrease racial isolation and the concentration
  of underserved students in the same school.

Schools with more than 60 of a single racial/ethnic group Schools with API State Rank of 1 and more than 60 of a single racial/ethnic group
Actual Round 1 2008-09 SY 15 6
Draft attendance area assignments 11 3
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Exploring Assignment Systems

• Using historical data about choices people have
  made, and information from the boundary
  simulations, researchers have begun exploring
  different choice systems designed to control for
  different things, such as
• Achievement diversity
• Proximity
• Achievement diversity and proximity
• Limitations of using historical choice data
• Choice patterns are a product of our current
  system and would change with a new system.
• Current participation patterns vary by
  racial/ethnic group.

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Exploring Assignment Systems

• The exploration
• is not complete.
• Tonights feedback will allow us to focus our
  exploration.
• One or multiple diversity characteristics?
• Maximize diversity, proximity, choice?

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Exploring Assignment Systems

• One or multiple diversity characteristics?
• Too many characteristics in the system can hurt
  how well the system performs.
• For example, our current system has five
  characteristics and for each characteristic there
  is a positive and negative value.
• This creates 32 possible profiles, and the system
  works to assign a balance of these profiles.
• We think this is one of the reasons the current
  system does not perform well.

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Exploring Assignment Systems

• One or multiple diversity characteristics?
• Exploring the possibility of using achievement
  diversity instead of multiple diversity
  characteristics.
• One possible approach use multiple years of
  achievement data to calculate an achievement
  value for geographic areas (e.g., census tracts).

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Exploring Assignment Systems

• Maximize diversity, proximity, choice?
• Our current system
• includes a priority for attendance area students
  until the assignment of students from attendance
  areas stops contributing to diversity
• assigns students to their highest ranked choice,
  not the choice that would maximize diversity
• includes waiting pools, appeals, and open
  enrollment processes designed to maximize choice.

55
Feedback During Discussion

• Tonights Objectives
• Narrow number of student assignment boundary
  options for deeper exploration.
• Focus on attendance areas or zones?
• Provide feedback on elements to include in a
  student assignment system.
• One or multiple diversity characteristics?
• Maximize diversity, proximity, choice?
• Guidance on next steps and the timeline for
  approving a new student assignment system.

56
Overview of Tonights Presentation

• Quick review of last years work.
• Approach to developing potential options
• Creating boundary options
• Exploring student assignment systems.
• Potential Options.
• Confirm next steps and timeline.
• Discuss a community engagement plan.

57
We know that

• It is not possible to create a single student
  assignment system that will satisfy everyone.
• Student assignment has to be supported by
• Strategic placement of programs and services.
• Targeted outreach and recruitment.
• Strategic transportation policy and
  infrastructure.
• Any new student assignment system will need to be
  monitored closely each year, and fine-tuned as
  the outcomes become clearer with each new
  entering grade.
• The options we describe could be modified in
  different ways, and additional options could be
  proposed by the Board.

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For All Options

• The required program needs of Special Education
  and English Learner students will always be met.
• Current students would be grandfathered into
  their current school.
• Younger siblings would continue to get priority
  to attend the same school as an older sibling.
• The District will provide language pathways for
  those students in bilingual or immersion programs.

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For All Options

• Schools with criteria for admission, newcomer
  schools, and language immersion schools would
  draw city-wide so would not have a boundary.
• The work of the Program Placement Committee may
  result in additional programs or schools being
  identified for city-wide attendance.
• Those decisions could be incorporated into any of
  the options.

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For All Options

• In the meantime, the Student Assignment
  Subcommittee will continue to use the provisional
  recommendations described above.

• Criteria for Admission
• Lowell High School
• SOTA High School
• Newcomer Schools
• Chinese Education Center (K5)
• Mission Education Center (K5)
• Newcomer High School
• International High School
• Language Immersion Schools
• Alice Fong Yu K8 (Cantonese)
• Buena Vista Elementary (Spanish)
• DeAvila Elementary (Cantonese)
• Fairmont Elementary (Spanish)
• Marshall ES Elementary (Spanish)

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For All Options

• Services and supports would be adjusted to ensure
  equitable access.
• Ensure the services and supports essential for
  student success are available at every school.
• Evaluate the need to change the location of
  special education programs and language programs.
• Revise the transportation policy.
• Strengthen the address verification procedures.

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Potential Options

• Option 1 Attendance Area Assignment System.
• Students get assigned to their attendance area
  school.
• Language programs and schools with criteria for
  admission are available for choice assignments.
• Feeder patterns from elementary to middle to
  high.
• Special Education and English Learner programs
  not available at every school get grouped
  geographically.
• Variations
• Expand the list of programs and schools available
  for choice assignments (Program Placement
  Committee).
• Instead of designating high school students to
  their attendance area school, allow them to
  submit choices.

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Potential Options

• Option 2 Controlled Choice Assignment System.
• Similar to Option 1, but instead of assigning all
  students to their attendance area school,
  families could submit choices.
• A controlled choice assignment system could be
  designed to
• Give priority to attendance area students
• Maximize diversity
• Maximize choice assignments
• Any combination of the above.
• Students who do not get one of their choices get
  assigned to their attendance area school.

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Potential Options

• Option 3 Zone Assignment System.
• Instead of individual attendance areas, draw
  boundaries around a series of schools.
• Use an assignment system designed to maximize
  diversity to assign students to a school in the
  zone.
• Variation
• Allow families to submit choices for any school
  in the zone, and use a controlled choice system
  designed to maximize diversity.

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Feedback and Discussion

• The options we described could be modified in
  different ways, and additional options could be
  proposed by the Board.
• Tonights objectives
• Narrow number of student assignment boundary
  options for deeper exploration.
• Focus on attendance areas or zones?
• Provide feedback on elements to include in a
  student assignment system.
• One or multiple diversity characteristics?
• Maximize diversity, proximity, choice?

66
Overview of Tonights Presentation

• Quick review of last years work.
• Approach to developing potential options
• Creating boundary options
• Exploring student assignment systems.
• Potential Options.
• Confirm next steps and timeline.
• Discuss a community engagement plan.

67
Timeline

• The Board of Education plans to have a new
  student assignment system in place for students
  who will start kindergarten, 6th grade, and 9th
  grade in August 2011.
• The enrollment process for students entering
  K/6/9 in August 2011 will kick-off in November
  2010.
• The Board will approve a new student assignment
  system during the 2009-10 school year.
• In the meantime, SFUSD will continue to use the
  current student assignment process.

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Immediate Next Steps
Develop Approve
Design Analyze
Identify options for deeper exploration
Sep 14 2009
69
Immediate Next Steps
Develop Approve
Design Analyze
Identify options for deeper exploration
Community Conversations
Oct 19 2009
Dec 7 2009
Nov 16 2009
Sep 14 2009
70
Immediate Next Steps
Develop Approve
Design Analyze
Identify options for deeper exploration
SecondReading and Approval
Review Findings
First Reading
Community Conversations
Committees
Oct 19 2009
Dec 7 2009
Mid Jan 2010
Nov 16 2009
Feb 9 2010
Mar 9 2010
Sep 14 2009
71
Immediate Next Steps
Develop Approve
Design Analyze
Identify options for deeper exploration
SecondReading and Approval
Review Findings
First Reading
Community Conversations
Committees
Oct 19 2009
Dec 7 2009
Mid Jan 2010
Nov 16 2009
Feb 9 2010
Mar 9 2010
Sep 14 2009
72
Overview of Tonights Presentation

• Quick review of last years work.
• Approach to developing potential options
• Creating boundary options
• Exploring student assignment systems.
• Potential Options.
• Confirm next steps and timeline.
• Discuss a community engagement plan.

73
Goals

• Deepen understanding of the priorities and the
  options being considered by the Board of
  Education.
• Provide opportunities for meaningful discussion
  with diverse community and district stakeholders.

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Structures

• Invite school communities, parent organizations,
  and community groups to convene community
  conversations.
• Each convener will invite participants.
• Each conversation will use the same information
  and guiding questions.
• SFUSD will provide materials and a facilitator
  (multilingual).
• Conversation notes will be shared with the
  participants, the Board, and staff.
• Hold three Ad Hoc committee meetings.
• October 19, November 16, and December 7.

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Tonights Objectives

• Narrow number of student assignment boundary
  options for deeper exploration.
• Focus on attendance areas or zones?
• Provide feedback on elements to include in a
  student assignment system.
• One or multiple diversity characteristics?
• Maximize diversity, proximity, choice?
• Guidance on next steps and the timeline for
  approving a new student assignment system.