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Ad Hoc Committee on Student Assignment

Ad Hoc Committee on Student Assignment. September 14, 2009. Tonight’s 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.

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Ad Hoc Committee on Student Assignment

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  1. Ad Hoc Committee on Student Assignment September 14, 2009

  2. Tonight’s 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 Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s 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 Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s 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

  6. 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 Board’s equity-centered strategic plan - Beyond the Talk: Taking Action to Educate Every Child Now.

  7. 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.

  8. Why Redesign Student Assignment? • The current student assignment plan has not met SFUSD’s 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. Board’s 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.

  12. 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.

  14. Complex: No Simple Solution • The focus tonight is on • the student assignment system!

  15. Overview of Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s 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.

  16. 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.

  17. 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. • Tonight’s feedback will enable the exploration to continue.

  18. Overview of Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s 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.

  20. Explored • Boundaries surrounding individual schools: • Attendance Areas. • Boundaries surrounding multiple schools: • Small Zones. • LargeZones.

  21. 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).

  22. K-12 SFUSD Students, Fall 2008

  23. K-5 Enrolled Outside SF City Planning Neighborhood

  24. 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.

  25. 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

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

  27. 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).

  28. 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.

  29. Diversity: Socioeconomic

  30. Diversity: Linguistic

  31. Diversity: Academic Based on SFUSD students’ home addresses, not school enrollment.

  32. Diversity: Race/Ethnicity Based on SFUSD students’ home addresses, not school enrollment.

  33. 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.

  34. 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).

  35. 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.

  36. 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.)

  37. 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.

  38. Feedback During Discussion • Tonight’s 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.

  39. Overview of Tonight’s Presentation • Quick review of last year’s 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.

  40. 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.

  41. 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.

  42. 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.

  43. 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.

  44. 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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