The Wheel of Fortune

I spun the Wheel of Fortune and I hit the jackpot.

The Wheel of Fortune, in this case, is the San Francisco Unified School District's school choice lottery, and the jackpot is a seat at our first-choice school.

I have to say, it sure was a nice feeling to open that assignment letter from the district. All my research, touring and analyzing paid off, and the process is winding down. Until my older child applies to college, anyway. But that's two years off.

At least I don't have to negotiate with the district, write appeals or hold out for the 10-day count — all strategies that could be implemented if necessary. No, it's settled. But was I lucky? If so, how lucky?

I realize most people have absolutely no idea how the SFUSD assigns students to schools. Every community with school choice has its own unique way of doing things. But San Francisco's system is really quite interesting. That's because it's a lottery that tries to create diversity in the schools, and, at the same time, make as many parents happy as possible. How can this work, you might reasonably ask? Here's how (and don't think there isn't a lot of griping and tweaking of the system going on continually):

Whenever there are more applicants than openings at a school, the lottery kicks in. But it's not a pure lottery. Instead, the district uses a formula called the Diversity Index to determine if each applicant will add diversity to the school. The five "race neutral" factors used in the Diversity Index are:

1. "Extreme poverty" (for example: Does the student live in public housing or is the student homeless?)
2. Socioeconomic status — determined by participation in the free/reduced lunch program or other assistance programs
3. The student's home language
4. The academic performance of the sending school
5. The academic achievement of the student — determined by standardized test scores, or for an incoming kindergartner, by whether or not she attended preschool

This year, 84% of San Francisco schools received more requests than there were seats available. This may give the impression that the schools in San Francisco are incredibly popular, but it's simply that families can request up to seven schools. Therefore, there are up to seven times the number of requests for seats than actual students needing seats, giving the appearance of high demand.

The reality is that 81% of the 3,145 families looking for middle schools got their first-choice school this year.

Our first-choice school, His Sister's Old School, had five requests per seat, more than any of the other middle schools. "Wow," you might think, "She's so lucky." Sure, but 81% of all fifth-grade applicants got their first-choice school, so I'm not that lucky.

To tell the truth, this year I found that there were five middle schools that I would have been happy sending Alex to. That was rather a pleasant realization. I wasn't terribly stressed out about the process of picking the right public middle school. I'm more concerned that Alex might do better in a little, tiny private school, with small class sizes.

So, even though I spun the Wheel of Fortune and won the public school jackpot, I'm still not completely free of stress and concern. If I were, I wouldn't be a very modern parent, would I?

Comments

[Michelle]

I found this article wonderful because I am going through the same thing with my 4th grader as we speak. Her teacher this year has bogged the students down with so much homework they have no time for social activities...we have been spending anywhere from 1-3 hours a night on homework which to me an hour is acceptable anything above that I have to questions what the teacher is doing. I have brought this to the teachers attention as well as the principal and superintendant with no results. I also asked for my daughter to be moved to another classroom and was flat out refused! My daughter now hates school and dreads going in the morning. She has also been having exema breakouts due to stress and headaches. She told me she is afraid of her teacher and feels there is no reason to try because her nothing is good enough for the teacher!!! This is coming from a nine year old!!! Do now she has 2 days left before Christmas break and I will be in this Friday to let them know she will not be returning to this school after break for I have enrolled her in a private school. I could go on and on about things that have happened this year.