Report on Denver School Choice--first year

A Denver organization, A+ Denver,  reports on the first year of Denver's new school choice system, which seems to have gone well.

Evaluation of Denver’s SchoolChoice Process for the 2011-12 School Year
Prepared for the SchoolChoice Transparency Committee at A+ Denver
by Mary Klute, U. of Colorado, Denver

and

Assessment of Assignment Tool
by Dr. Gary Kochenberger, U. of Colorado, Denver

See also Diving deep into SchoolChoice by Robert Reichardt 
"The new choice process consolidated over 60 different processes into one.  A computer program was used to assign students to schools based on student preferences, number of available seats, and school preferences (e.g. siblings, residents, or auditions for Denver School of the Arts). A second round  is open now through August 31, 2012 for students who are not happy with their current assignment or did not enter the first round.

"A Transparency Committee of DPS administrators and principals along with community stakeholders was selected by A+ Denver to receive and interpret an evaluation report on thecomputer program used to make the assignments and a second on the information created by the choice process.  A+ Denver also provides spreadsheets of choice data by school.  

...

"The choice process worked. DPS was able to collect over 20,000 hand-written choice requests and implement a complex computer program to assign students to schools.

"There are huge differences in demand for schools. The differences are largest in high schools: Denver School of Science and Technology, Stapleton, had 8.2 first choice requests per available seat compared to Denver Online High School which had .01 first choice requests per seat.  This is a difference of 82,000%."

Denver school choice is an IIPSC project, see my earlier blog posts.