School choice, school quality, and student performance

 School choice, which allows children to move away from neighborhood schools, doesn't by itself improve school quality, although it may allow under-performing schools to become smaller, which may make them easier to fix, or to close.

Here are two  recent assessments of two different transportation options available to Boston public school students. Both conclude that school quality matters.

The first is an op-ed in the Boston Globe saying that school choice among Boston public schools has led to too much transportation and not enough innovation. (One of the authors, Parag Pathak, played a critical role in designing  Boston's current school choice system.)

Boston needs to reexamine school assignment system
Rather than investing in high-cost travel to send students to schools across the city, Boston should consider redirecting those funds toward improving schools close to home.
By Joshua Angrist, Parag Pathak and Amanda Schmidt 

"Boston’s school assignment system has changed considerably since the 1970s. Busing today is voluntary: Students can choose to attend schools far from where they live as well as a range of neighborhood schools. This choice allows historically disadvantaged students to attend schools with more peers of different backgrounds, an option that many choose. Roughly three-quarters of students opted to enroll in non-neighborhood schools in the 2000s and 2010s. A recent study by our organization, MIT Blueprint Labs, shows that today’s assignment system works in the sense of facilitating integration.

However, the costs of the current system are high. Among the 100 US school districts with the highest enrollment, Boston maintains the greatest per-student transportation costs in the country. As of 2021, the city spent over $2,000 per student on travel, equivalent to 8 percent of per-pupil school spending.

Furthermore, the educational gains afforded by district-wide choice are less clear than the integration gains. Our research, which uses credible, randomized methods designed by Blueprint Labs to gauge the causal effect of enrollment at different types of schools, paints a nuanced picture of the benefits of travel to non-neighborhood schools. Black and Hispanic students who travel to a non-neighborhood school have more white and Asian peers than they otherwise would. But travel does not impact learning as measured by MCAS scores, high school graduation rates, or college enrollment. We argue that this is because in the current BPS choice system — unlike the separate and unequal system of 1974 — the schools students travel to are no better than those nearby.

...

"The vast sums that now go to cross-neighborhood transportation might be better spent. The city might instead invest in programs with proven educational benefits. Saga Education’s effective high-dosage tutoring program, for example, cost just $1,800 per student in 2023. This spending may do more to close racial achievement gaps than non-neighborhood assignment.

"Some might counter that choice is intrinsically valuable and that neighborhood schools are likely to be more segregated than the schools that many historically disadvantaged families choose today. These undeniable benefits must be weighed, however, against alternative uses of the money that flows to busing. Boston schools have improved greatly since 1974: Dropout rates for all students have declined, and gaps by race, while still present, have narrowed. School assignment plans originating in 1974 may therefore be less useful today. It’s time to consider changing transportation policy in light of these changes in the city’s education landscape."

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Here's a paper, about a different transportation program available to some* Boston students, which takes them out of Boston to schools in neighboring towns and cities in the metropolitan area.  Moving to those suburban schools apparently improves student performance more than moving from one Boston school to another.

 Busing to Opportunity? The Impacts of the METCO Voluntary School Desegregation Program on Urban Students of Color  by Elizabeth Setren, NBER Working Paper 32864, DOI 10.3386/w32864, August 2024

Abstract: School assignment policies are a key lever to increase access to high performing schools and to promote racial and socioeconomic integration. For over 50 years, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) has bussed students of color from Boston, Massachusetts to relatively wealthier and predominantly White suburbs. Using a combination of digitized historical records and administrative data, I analyze the short and long run effects of attending a high-performing suburban school for applicants to the METCO program. I compare those with and without offers to enroll in suburban schools. I use a two-stage least squares approach that utilizes the waitlist assignment priorities and controls for a rich set of characteristics from birth records and application data. Attending a suburban school boosts 10th grade Math and English test scores by 0.13 and 0.21 standard deviations respectively. The program reduces dropout rates by 75 percent and increases on-time high school graduation by 13 percentage points. The suburban schools increase four-year college aspirations by 17 percentage points and enrollment by 21 percentage points. Participation results in a 12 percentage point increase in four-year college graduation rates. Enrollment increases average earnings at age 35 by $16,250. Evidence of tracking to lower performing classes in the suburban schools suggests these effects could be larger with access to more advanced coursework. Effects are strongest for students whose parents did not graduate college."

*"The program is very popular: 50 percent of Black youth in Boston applied and 20 percent of Latinx youth in the past 20 years"

...

"After demonstrating the comparability of students with and without offers, I estimate the impact of receiving an offer to the program and the impact of participating in the program. Offers to enroll in suburban districts serve as instrumental variables and all models control for approximate waitlist position using age at the time of application, gender, and race controls. Therefore the estimates compare the outcomes of those who enroll in METCO to applicants with similar demographics, who applied at similar times, but did not enroll because they were not selected from the waitlist."

The Robert Rosenthal Memorial Lecture for 2023 at BU, by Parag Pathak

 Parag Pathak gave this year's Robert Rosenthal Memorial Lecture at Boston University. The title of his talk is “Still Worth the Trip? The Evolution of School Busing in Boston” 

(The video below may undergo some further editing, but right now it starts with introductions at minute 3.) 

You can also find the Rosenthal lectures from previous years at the link.

(I had the honor of giving the 2007 lecture... Bob Rosenthal and I are academic siblings, we were both advised by Bob Wilson.)

Busing for schools in Boston and NYC, by Angrist, Gray-Lobe, Idoux & Pathak

 One of the spinoffs of the design of school choice systems in Boston, NYC and elsewhere is that it has opened up the empirical study of school effectiveness, by allowing economists to use some randomness in the assignments while controlling for family preferences to distinguish school effects from student selection.  It has turned out that it's hard to change test scores through school assignments, and neighborhoods remain important. But integration responds to voluntary choice, although the paper below doesn't find effects on college attendance after controlling for the selection of travel by students.

Still Worth the Trip? School Busing Effects in Boston and New York by Joshua Angrist, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Clemence M. Idoux & Parag A. Pathak, NBER WORKING PAPER 30308  DOI 10.3386/w30308  July 2022

Abstract: "School assignment in Boston and New York City came to national attention in the 1970s as courts across the country tried to integrate schools. Today, district-wide choice allows Boston and New York students to enroll far from home, perhaps enhancing integration. Urban school transportation is increasingly costly, however, and has unclear integration and education consequences. We estimate the causal effects of non-neighborhood school enrollment and school travel on integration, achievement, and college enrollment using an identification strategy that exploits partly-random assignment in the Boston and New York school matches. Instrumental variables estimates suggest distance and travel boost integration for those who choose to travel, but have little or no effect on test scores and college attendance. We argue that small effects on educational outcomes reflect modest effects of distance and travel on school quality as measured by value-added."

"School transportation expenditures today are driven in part by the fact that many large urban school districts allow families to choose schools district-wide, lengthening school commutes for some. District-wide  choice  is  a  feature  of  school  assignment  in  Boston,  Chicago,  Denver,  Indianapolis,Newark,  New Orleans,  Tulsa,  and Washington,  DC, to name a few.  In choice districts,  seats at over-subscribed schools are typically allocated by algorithms that reflect family preferences in the form of a rank-order list and a limited set of school priorities.  ...  Choice in large urban districts is appealing because choice systems potentially decouple school assignment from underlying residential segregation.  Moreover, where school quality is unevenly distributed over neighborhoods, district-wide choice affords all students a shot at schoolsviewed as high-quality.

"This  paper  asks  whether  school  travel  in  the  modern  choice  paradigm  is  working  as  hoped, boosting integration and learning, especially for minority students.  Our investigation focuses on Boston and New York, two cities of special interest because of their high transportation costs and because they’ve long been battlegrounds in the fight over school integration.  We estimate the effects of non-neighborhood school enrollment for students for whom school travel is facilitated by school choice.  In both cities, students who opt for non-neighborhood schooling have higher test scores and are more likely to go to college than those who travel less.  But these estimates may reflect selection bias arising from the fact that more motivated or better-off families are more likely to travel. 

"We  solve  the  problem  of  selection  bias  using  the  conditional  random  assignment  to  schools embedded in Boston and New York’s school matching algorithms.  A given student may be offered a seat at a school in his or neighborhood, or a seat farther away.  Conditional on an applicant’s preferences  and  school  priorities,  modern  choice  algorithms  randomize  seat  assignment,  thereby manipulating distance and travel independently of potential outcomes.

...

" A parsimonious explanation for our findings, therefore, is that travel facilitates integration but does not translate into large enough changes in value-added to change education outcomes much."

Tom Payzant, Boston schools superintendent who reformed school choice, dies at 80

 Tom Payzant played a critical role in transforming Boston's school choice from an immediate acceptance algorithm that exposed students and families to complex strategic risk when navigating the system, to a deferred acceptance algorithm that simplified their participation. As Superintendent of Boston Public Schools, Tom came to understand those issues well, and acted on them.

Here's his obit in the Boston Globe.

Thomas Payzant, whose education vision lifted Boston’s schools, dies at 80, By Bryan Marquard

and here's the statement from Boston Public Schools:

SUPERINTENDENT'S STATEMENT ON THE PASSING OF TOM PAYZANT

Here's a pic I took of Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Parag Pathak, and Tayfun Sonmez when we met with Payzant and his colleagues at Boston Public School headquarters, during the years we worked with BPS, starting around 2003.

Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Parag Pathak and Tayfun Sonmez at Boston Public School headquarters

Here's a paper that came out of those meetings, describing the deliberations that ultimately led BPS to adopt a deferred acceptance algorithm design for it's school choice system.

• Abdulkadiroglu, Atila, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth, and Tayfun Sonmez, The Boston Public School Match," American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 95,2, May, 2005, 368-371.

Over the course of those years, I was privileged to watch Parag evolve from a super smart young grad student to being a leader in the design of school choice.

I'll post tomorrow about some of Parag's latest efforts to bring the work associated with the design and evaluation of school choice, and market design more generally, into the world of startup companies and big university labs.

Charter schools and school choice

Souls, a journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, has a special issue on New Orleans schools.

Volume 17, Issue 3-4, 2015 

• Taylor & Francis
•  

Souls

A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society

ISSN
1099-9949 (Print), 1548-3843 (Online)

Special Issue: Education in New Orleans: A Decade after Hurricane Katrina

The papers are by and large critical of recent reforms, including school choice.  New Orleans Recovery School District has mostly charter schools.
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And here's a paper just published in the AER that looks at the effects of charter schools, using the fact that some non-charters have been taken over, which changes the selection criteria (students already in a takeover school are grandfathered in...)

American Economic Review 2016, 106(7): 1878–1920

Charters without Lotteries: Testing Takeovers in New Orleans and Boston

Atila Abdulkadiroğlu, Joshua D. Angrist, Peter D. Hull and Parag A. Pathak

Charter takeovers are traditional public schools restarted as charter schools. We develop a grandfathering instrument for takeover attendance that compares students at schools designated for takeover with a matched sample of students attending similar schools not yet taken over. Grandfathering estimates from New Orleans show substantial gains from takeover enrollment. In Boston, grandfathered students see achievement gains at least as large as the gains for students assigned charter seats in lotteries. A non-charter Boston turnaround intervention that had much in common with the takeover strategy generated gains as large as those seen for takeovers, while other more modest turnaround interventions yielded smaller effects.

Full-Text Access | Supplementary Materials

Delay in Boston school choice this year

Here's the story in the Boston Herald: BPS apologizes 
for Boston schools lottery hang-up

"Incoming school Superintendent Tommy Chang says he wants all city parents to enroll their children in Boston Public Schools — but a glitch in the BPS lottery this spring will delay choices for many families until long after most private and charter schools have sent out acceptance letters and expect an answer.

Chang told Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” yesterday, “I think Boston Public Schools need to be an option for all parents.”

Chang, currently a superintendent in Los Angeles schools, will take the Hub post in July pending school committee approval.

In an automated call Sunday, the district notified registrants for grades K, 6 and 9 that they won’t receive their fall assignments until early April, after the School Committee votes on March 25 whether to close Elihu Greenwood Leadership Academy, Rogers Middle School, West Roxbury Academy, Community Academy and the Middle School Academy program.

“We completely understand and apologize for the delay,” said district spokeswoman Denise Snyder. “We try very hard to coordinate our timeline for (school) assignments, understanding that families have several educational options and it’s hard for them if the results are not all aligned. ... But if we did not delay the (school assignment) round, many families could have ended up in a school that was closing.”

Jon Clark, co-director of three K-8 Brooke Charter Schools in Boston, said their school lotteries, like those of many other charter schools, are tomorrow, acceptances will be mailed the following day, and parents will have until March 18 to respond.

“We aren’t unfortunately coordinated (with Boston Public Schools) in any meaningful way,” Clark said. “If we had a common system, we could make it more simple for parents.”

Many private schools mail acceptance letters this week and expect an answer and deposit by early April."
**************

Boston district schools use a centralized clearinghouse run by a deferred acceptance algorithm to match children to public schools, but they don't yet have a single application system that includes the charter schools, hence this kind of snafu is possible... A number of cities have coordinated the district and charter schools in a single application process, and the quote above from the charter school director Mr Clark makes me optimistic that this may be politically possible in Boston under the new Superintendent.

School Choice Index from Brookings

The Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings has published
The 2014 Education Choice and Competition Index

Here is their list of school districts that are "leaders in choice"

The report says in part:

"The Recovery School District in New Orleans scores well on nearly all of the components of the ECCI. In particular, there is high availability of choice, with nearly 80% of schools being charters, a supply of affordable private schools, vouchers for private school attendance available from the state, and virtual education provided through Supplemental Course Academy/Course Choice. The school assignment process maximizes the match between parental preference and school assignment through an ideal computer matching algorithm. There is no default school assignment (everyone must choose), a common application for traditional public schools and charters, and information on school performance that includes test results for children attending private schools. Information on school performance is clearly presented with support for parents in understanding and navigating the choice process. Transportation expenses to schools of choice are covered through free public transportation tokens or yellow bus service.

"New York City (NYC) also repeats its position in second place overall and in first place among the 100 largest school districts.2 NYC scores particularly well with respect to its choice process, policies for closing unpopular schools, and information provision to parents and students.

"New Orleans, NYC, Denver, and new to our list of top performers this year, Newark, standout in their use of a centralized computer-based algorithm to assign public high school students to schools in such a way as to maximize the match between student preferences and school assignment, conditional on any admission requirements exercised by the school. Students apply once and receive one offer, assuming they can match with one of the schools they have listed among their choices. New Orleans, Denver, and Newark include charter schools in their single application process, whereas NYC does not."
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Although the report doesn't mention The Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice (IIPSC), this is quite a compliment to IIPSC, since, of those top-10 cities, New Orleans, Newark, Washington DC, and Denver are among the cities in which IIPSC has helped design Uniform Enrollment school choice systems. And New York and Boston are the school districts which initiated the market design contribution to school choice, and in which the IIPSC principals got our start, before IIPSC was formed.

Ashlagi and Shi on community cohesion in school choice

Itai Ashlagi and Peng Shi have a paper motivated by some of the recent discussions of school choice in Boston:

Improving Community Cohesion in School Choice via Correlated-Lottery Implementation
Itai Ashlagi and Peng Shi
Draft Date: August 6, 2013

Abstract:
In school choice, children submit a preference ranking over schools to a centralized assignment algorithm, which takes into account schools’ priorities over children and uses randomization to break ties. One criticism of current school choice mechanisms is that they tend to disperse communities so children do not go to school with others from their neighborhood.
We suggest to improve community cohesion by implementing a correlated lottery in a given school choice mechanism: we find a convex combination of deterministic assignments that maintains the original assignment probabilities, thus maintaining choice, but yields increased cohesion.

To analyze the gain in cohesion for a wide class of mechanisms, we first prove the following characterization which maybe of independent interest: any mechanism which, in the large market limit, is non-atomic, Bayesian incentive compatible, symmetric and efficient within each priority class, is a “lottery-plus-cutoff” mechanism. This means that the large market limit can be described as follows: given the distribution of preferences, every student receives an identically distributed lottery number, every school sets a lottery cutoff for each priority class, and a student is assigned her most preferred school for which she meets the cutoff. This generalizes Liu and Pycia (2012) to allow arbitrary priorities. Using this, we derive analytic expressions for maximum cohesion under a large market approximation. We show that the benefit of lottery-correlation is greater when students’ preferences are more correlated.

In practice, although the correlated-lottery implementation problem is NP-hard, we present a heuristic that does well. We apply this to real data from Boston elementary school choice 2012 and find that we can increase cohesion by 79% for K1 and 37% for K2 new families. Greater cohesion gain is possible (tripling cohesion for K1 and doubling for K2) if we apply lottery-correlation on top of reducing the choice menu (to what was eventually adopted by Boston after the 2012-2013 school choice reform). This has minimal impact on racial or socio-economic diversity.

Boston School Committee votes for "personalized" school districts

Late breaking news, tonight: Boston School Committee approves new student-assignment system (see this mornings post):

"The Boston School Committee tonight scrapped a school assignment plan developed under court-ordered desegregation almost a quarter century ago and approved a system that seeks to allow more students to attend schools closer to home.

Starting in fall 2014, the School Department will do away with three massive student-assignment zones, which it has operated since 1989.

Instead, a complex algorithm will generate a list of schools from which parents could choose based on a variety of factors, such as distance from school, school capacity, and MCAS performance. Parents will receive at least six school choices, including a minimum of four of medium or high-quality.

The committee also voted to do away with the so-called walk preference for schools."

********************

As far as I can tell from a distance, I believe that preferences will still be processed according to the deferred acceptance algorithm my colleagues and I helped a previous school committee to adopt...

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Update: here's the story in Boston Magazine: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/03/14/a-chinese-mit-grad-student-designed-the-new-school-choice-system/ 

Boston reconsiders districts for its school choice system

Boston Public Schools divides schools into districts, and families can rank schools in their district. They have been debating changing the districts by redrawing the map. But drawing maps is hard. They are now considering a proposal for essentially defining a different district for each child, based on the idea of giving each child potential access to schools of different quality. The NY Times has the story today: No Division Required in This School Problem.

The article focuses on contributions by market designers Peng Shi, Parag Pathak, and Tayfun Sonmez.

The School Committee is scheduled to vote on this tonight.

Ed Glaeser on Boston school choice

Ed Glaeser writes in the Boston Globe: Boston school-assignments: Listen to the Nobel committee

One sentence struck me as a little odd:
 "The current system owes much to Roth, a professor at UCLA, and Shapley, a Harvard colleague of mine (who, sadly, is leaving for Stanford)."

School choice in the news again in Boston

There are two things underlying school choice debates around the country:

1. In most big cities there aren't enough good schools for all children

2. People who live near good schools support a policy of sending children to local schools, and people who don't live near good schools support policies that allow children and their families to choose to go to more distant schools.

Here's the NY Times on the current debate in Boston, which mostly seems to involve limiting the scope of school choice to geographically smaller districts: 4 Decades After Clashes, Boston Again Debates School Busing

and here's the Harvard Gazette: Joel Klein speaks at Harvard Graduate School of Education

“The facts are pretty gruesome,” said Klein..."
**********

Links to the proposals are contained in this earlier post.

New zones in Boston Public School choice

Boston's school choice system is presently organized intro districts, and parents can submit preferences for schools in their district (which are the processed in a deferred acceptance algorithm).

There have been concerns about transportation costs and times, and several new proposals are now under consideration, ranging from local schools to increasing the number of school districts, so that each one is smaller. (Here's the BPS page on the proposals and the public discussions that will now take place.)

Changing back to 100% local schools determined by home address would of course remove the need for any algorithm to process preferences. However all the other proposals will continue to need a school choice algorithm. As far as I know, there isn't any discussion about changing the algorithm, it's all about re-defining the choice sets.

Boston kindergartens and preschool places

Boston is short of good public kindergarten places. This in turn creates a demand for preschool places, since preschool kids move up automatically to kindergarten in the same school, so even parents who wouldn't ordinarily send their kid to preschool may be tempted to do so since it gives them two chances at a good kindergarten.

Rise in kindergarten demand leaves many in city scrambling: Hundreds of students remain unassigned

"Demand for kindergarten seats in the Boston Public Schools for this fall has risen by more than 25 percent, an unanticipated increase that has left hundreds of students without an assigned school and has prompted officials to add more classrooms.

The enrollment boom surfaced in the past few months during the first round of registration for kindergarten classrooms that will serve students who will be 5 by Sept. 1. The School Department received 2,306 such applications, up from 1,823 during that same period last year.
...
"Predicting kindergarten enrollment in a city as large as Boston can be a tricky endeavor, school officials say. The transient nature of the city - with many young, middle-class families moving out and a number of immigrant families moving in - creates volatility in relying on birth rates.

"The city school system also faces immense competition for kindergarten students from dozens of private and parochial schools and a growing number of independently run public charter schools. City school officials often do not know until after the school year begins if all the kindergarten students offered a seat will show up
...
"The School Department is trying to respond to the rising demand by adding a kindergarten classroom at five schools: Umana Academy in East Boston, Harvard-Kent in Charlestown, Mission Hill in Jamaica Plain, and Haley Elementary and Sumner Elementary, both in Roslindale.

"Kindergarten is not the only grade experiencing a rise in applications. The city’s preschool program for 4-year-olds also has an increase, with 2,518 applications filed during the first registration cycle, compared with 2,070 during the same period last year. That has left 745 4-year-olds without preschool assignments, an increase of 513 from last year.

The city is not obligated under state law to make a seat available for all preschool students who apply, as it is with kindergarten.
...
"Margaret Day’s 4-year-old son is near the bottom of waiting lists at three schools for preschool, leaving little chance of admittance. Now, the Jamaica Plain mother is resigned to going through the lottery again next year for kindergarten, even though many seats will be snatched up as preschoolers move up. She said she does not understand how the School Department was “blindsided’’ about the enrollment increase, and is pushing for changes.

“We are going to be picking through the bones to get a good seat next year,’’ Day said. “The reason we went through the [preschool] lottery is because of the difficulty of getting into kindergarten.’’

Boston school choice politics

The Globe reports that Boston Mayor Menino has weighed in on the long running debate on the size of the zones in which school choice should operate: Menino vows change in school assignment system


"Mayor Thomas M. Menino vowed last night to radically change Boston’s school assignment lottery, taking aim at a system forged in the racially charged days of busing and pledging to create a plan that will send more children to classes closer to home.

"In his annual State of the City address, Menino decried a system that “ships our kids to schools across our city’’ and tears at the fabric of communities. The school-day Diaspora prevents bonds from developing among neighbors, Menino said, because parents do not car pool and their children are less likely to play together.

"As recently as 2008, Menino made the same promise in another State of the City address. At that time, the mayor said he would not “pour dollar after dollar into gas tanks’’ as he vowed to “rethink our school assignment zones.’’ In last night’s speech, he acknowledged past efforts, but promised that this year would be different.

"He is ordering Superintendent Carol R. Johnson to appoint a citywide task force to design a new system and determine how it should be implemented.
...

"Councilor Tito Jackson said after the speech: “I want to know what the radical change is. I know what the problem is.’’

"Jackson said that all parents want the same opportunities for their children, but lamented that schools in his Grove Hall neighborhood lack advanced classes offered elsewhere. “The problem is we need quality schools across the city,” Jackson said, adding, “We’re not there yet.’’
...
"In 2009, Johnson proposed five student assignment zones, but the plan collapsed under public scrutiny, mostly because of a lack of good-quality schools.

"Since then, the School Department has closed several low-performing schools, expanded some high-performing schools, and improved support for schools in a swath of the city that includes much of Roxbury and Dorchester. Administrators have also made fundamental changes at 11 state-designated underperforming schools, and some show signs of a turnaround.

“The Boston public schools have come a long way in the last 20 years,’’ Menino said in last night’s speech. “I’m committing tonight that one year from now Boston will have adopted a radically different student assignment plan, one that puts a priority on children attending schools closer to their homes.’’

Revising the size of Boston school choice districts?

School choice in Boston mostly focuses on allowing families to choose a school in the school zone that they live in.  The Globe reports that the city is thinking of having more, smaller zones.

Boston careful in school-assignment overhaul: Prior 2 attempts faced heated public opposition

"The city is currently divided into three regions, providing parents and students a choice of roughly two dozen elementary, middle, and kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools. (High schools are open to students across the city.)

"When the three zones were implemented in 1989, replacing a court-ordered forced-busing plan to desegregate the city’s schools, the creators anticipated that as schools improved academically the three zones would be replaced in a few years with nine smaller assignment areas.

"But every attempt to create smaller zones over the last two decades has failed because there have not been enough high-quality schools to go around. Some neighborhoods, such as West Roxbury, have a strong selection of solid-performing schools, while Roxbury and some other areas have a concentration of the worst-performing schools in the state.

That reality will loom over the process as the School Department again assesses the feasibility of creating smaller zones."

School choice: what makes schools popular in Boston

One of the benefits of a strategy-proof school choice mechanism is that it yields meaningful data on parent preferences.  The Boston Globe has a story describing some of those preferences, as revealed through the rankings of schools submitted for the school choice algorithm. (The reporter, Akilah Johnson, thinks that some good schools are being missed, and that the poorest families often fail to participate in the school choice system.)

Popularity matters in school lottery: The district’s hidden gems struggle to gain attention from parents.

""The principal of Higginson-Lewis K-8 School and one of her first-grade teachers stood amid a swirl of school-shopping families at the Showcase of Schools, waiting to deliver their sales pitch.
...
"It’s like being a Hilton Hotel in between two Ritzes,’’ Simmons, the first-grade teacher, said of the schools to her right and left, Hernandez K-8 and Kilmer K-8, both with more applicants than prekindergarten seats. The inverse is true at Higginson-Lewis, making it one of the least sought-after schools in Boston - at least according to a school district tally akin to a judge’s score sheet.

"The city uses a lottery system that was intended to give all students access to high-achieving classrooms, regardless of neighborhood or life circumstance. But families fixate on a collection of well-known, fiercely sought-after schools, largely ignoring those with lesser reputations. And over the past two decades, popularity has often become a proxy for quality, making it even harder for schools to get off that second rung.

"Popularity is driven by parents with time, inclination, and sometimes the means to enter the school lottery early, armed with information and expectations. Their preferences create a system of prized schools, and those in low demand - schools whose reputations have suffered because they are in higher-crime neighborhoods, serve predominantly poor students, and have, in some cases, test scores lower than average.
...
"Each year, the district creates a “demand report’’ to help inform parents’ decisions. It shows how many parents listed a school among their top three picks. Parents look at the list and seize on schools they like, but also immediately see the schools they want to avoid, schools they often know little about.
...
"The answer lies in who is, and who is not, choosing a school and when they choose. Popular schools have become synonymous with the choices of white middle-class families, principals and families say. And the demand report reflects the choices of families who choose early.

"Oliver said parents of color and those in low-income communities “don’t always go in to make choices when the lottery starts. We have a lot of people who can’t make a commitment until June or even Labor Day.’’
...
"The lottery system was created in the name of giving parents more choice. Still, Boston’s dreams of equal access to quality remain deferred, with many of the least-selected schools lacking racial and economic diversity. The Higginson-Lewis has only 10 white students in a school of about 425, and Marshall has just eight white students in a school of 713.

“People will come to visit and they will say: ‘How many white students are in the class? I don’t want my child to be the only one,’ ’’ said Oliver, the Higginson principal.
...
"Middle-class parents often aren’t willing to send their children to a school next to Malcolm X Park in Roxbury or on a street sandwiched between Geneva Avenue and Bowdoin Street in Dorchester, where neighborhood violence has, at times, landed on the school’s doorstep.
...
"School choice is “pretty complicated stuff, and people are always eager to come up with pretty simple solutions,’’ said Curt Dudley-Marling, a Boston College professor who studies patterns of school failure and success. “It always seems to me that it’s rigged for parents who have the most resources.’’

"Not all families have the benefit of active parent groups that organize school tours to help families vet their options, which in Boston could mean as many as 20 public school options, not including charters. Single parents, families new to the country, parents of disabled children, or families struggling with the demands of life often are unable to investigate every option.

“I can’t imagine they have time, much less the resources, to go to fairs and all these things,’’ Dudley-Marling said. Instead, they, like most people, default to what they have heard within their circle of influence."

Debate over school choice

Yesterday's post discussed how it is difficult to create effective schools in poor neighborhoods: first class physical facilities aren't enough.  However, school choice isn't uniformly seen as helping: recent editorials in Boston and New York have championed the idea of returning to something more like neighborhood schools.  The theme seems to be that school choice is a poor substitute for having uniformly excellent local schools.

The Boston Globe ran a series of four editorials.

1. Boston Globe editorial: School-assignment plan — a relic in need of a full overhaul
"whenever officials reassess the Boston school-assignment plan, the busing crisis remains the touchpoint. Segregation was the original sin of the Boston schools - the conscious failure to invest in schools in poor, black neighborhoods - and remains the most oft-cited reason why the city should resist proposals to return the system to its neighborhood roots.
"Boston’s punishment is a daunting, time-consuming assignment process that drives away thousands of families - some to charter schools, some to Metco, and many out of the city entirely. It’s a plan that doesn’t remotely provide desegregation - with some schools more than 99 percent minority - but that officials are reluctant to change for fear of upsetting the fragile political equilibrium that sustains it.
"What remains is a system where students travel on buses to schools far from their homes, a daily migration that deprives them of playmates, consumes precious hours that could be devoted to learning, and costs the city $73 million - about 10 percent of the schools budget - for transportation alone.
"In addressing the sins of the past, the current assignment plan also masks the sins of the present. A formula so complicated that only the most sophisticated parents understand it, the plan combines parental choice, the luck of the lottery, and a built-in preference to keep siblings together. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the whole buckling contraption is designed to make up for the fact that about half of Boston’s schools rank in the bottom fifth on statewide tests."


2. Boston Globe editorial proposing smaller zones which "would give families a smaller range of choices, but make them more meaningful": Let students stay near homes — but offer choice as needed

3. Globe editorial on a successful pilot school: Leadership and flexibility, not buses, improve schools

4. Last in the series, Globe editorial imagining how a system of largely neighborhood schools should work: Future of Boston schools must reflect city’s transformation
""The Boston of the 1970s is long gone. What’s needed now is a return to normality, to a system where most kids go to school near their homes, and follow a predictable path to middle school. Those who seek a different experience - through the performing arts, two-way bilingual education, or intensive math and science, among other subjects - can find exciting options through magnet schools. Choice should be used to highlight the varied programs available in a big, urban system - not as a way to scramble the map, sending children on an hours-long odyssey in search of better principals and teachers."

The Bay State Banner summarizes their view of this debate: Superintendent to take on school assignment process
"The current school assignment process has been roundly criticized by parents in neighborhoods throughout the city. While many in the white community, including many city councilors, advocate for a return to a neighborhood schools system, where seats in any given school would be reserved for children who live in close proximity, many parents in the black community say they want better choices for their children."


NY Times op-ed: Why School Choice Fails, in which a Washington D.C. mom writes about how the process of closing failed schools left her neighborhood without any neighborhood schools.

And here's a NY Times letter in support of school choice: Does School Choice Improve Education?
"If access to high-performing schools has to come down to a number, better it be a lottery number than a ZIP code."

Swimming pools and school performance in Boston

Schools' physical facilities aren't so highly correlated with their reading scores...To put it another way, building a modern new building in a poor crime-infested neighborhood isn't enough to do the job. But different aspects of a school appeal to different families (which is the idea behind promoting school choice...)
Inequities among Boston’s schools: Gaps in facilities, test scores, safety complicate the process

"The Perkins Elementary School in South Boston is barely visible behind rows of nondescript brick buildings inside the Old Colony public housing development. Students make do without the most basic amenities, eating breakfast and lunch at their desks, taking gym classes at a Boys & Girls Club, and checking out books at a neighborhood library.

"About three miles away in a crime-ridden Dorchester neighborhood, the Holland Elementary School stands like a beacon. Nestled among fruit trees, Holland sports two cafeterias that serve freshly prepared meals, an indoor basketball court, an Olympic-size heated swimming pool, a soundproof music room with red and white electric guitars, and a library with more than 7,000 books.

"The stark differences between these two schools extend well beyond their facilities. Perkins, with its bare-bones surroundings, often propels students in early grades to great academic heights on standardized tests, while Holland struggles to get students to understand reading and math fundamentals.
...
""An impressive facility often does not equate with a stellar academic program. Other schools with meager facilities, such as Bradley in East Boston, Hale in Roxbury, and Mozart in Roslindale, had some of the highest reading and math scores on last spring’s Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams in the third grade. By contrast, some schools with swimming pools - such as Hennigan in Jamaica Plain, Marshall in Dorchester, and Mildred Avenue in Mattapan - landed in the bottom.
...
""The disparities add an agonizing layer to the school-selection process, underway for the next school year, as parents weigh what matters most for their child’s education and happiness: A nice building or solid academics? An outstanding music program or rigorous science instruction? A school near home or one with an after-school program?

"THE UNEVEN distribution of great facilities and programs underpins Boston’s elaborate school-lottery system, which was designed to give students a chance of getting into the best schools, and is also the reason the process is so harrowing. Some students win, gaining access to one of the city’s best schools, while other deserving students are consigned to schools with poor records of achievement, substandard facilities, or both.

“The reality is there are not enough good schools,’’ said Kim Janey, senior project director for the Boston School Reform Initiative at Massachusetts Advocates for Children, a Boston nonprofit."
...
"As Tarso Ramos, a Roxbury father, scouted schools at one of the city’s annual “showcase of schools,’’ held last month at a Jamaica Plain school, he had already conceded that he and his wife may not find the dream school for their son.

“It’s like a series of trade-offs,’’ Ramos said of the school-selection process. “So you figure out the right mix and what you can live without.’’

Boston school choice: waiting lists

The Boston Globe looks at waiting lists for Boston Public Schools. Some wait lists don't move until after the first week of classes, when the fact that some assigned students have left the school district can be verified.

CLASSES IN SESSION; THOUSANDS IN LIMBO: Parents frustrated as children languish on waiting lists

"School opened with almost 10,000 students - nearly 18 percent of the student body - still on waiting lists, trying to get into different schools than they were assigned. Some, like Mayes’s son, were held up because they came late to the process. Others applied on time but were disappointed by their assignments and hoping for better placements.

"Most would never get called. Those who did might wait days or weeks for an opening. Some might not be notified of vacancies until November, forcing families to make agonizing decisions about pulling children out of classrooms they have grown used to.

"Boston’s school lottery is a balancing act. Designed to give every family a chance at getting into a high-achieving school, the lottery lets parents request seats in schools outside their neighborhoods. The intent is to spread opportunity in a city with uneven schools and keep options open for parents, but the unintended consequence, too often, is disruption. Since school started in September, about 750 students moved off waiting lists and into different schools, leaving altered class lists and new vacancies to be filled behind them.

"Last-minute changes are inevitable in a city with a highly mobile population, where hundreds of students move during the summer, but Boston’s assignment system adds - and indeed fosters - additional layers of delay and uncertainty.

"Families who were asked to choose a school last winter or spring were never forced to commit to one. Students could show up - or not - in September. If they didn’t, the district left their seats open for eight school days before releasing the spots to wait-listed students, tying up thousands of seats for the first two weeks of school. The number of no-shows, eight days into this school year, was 2,810.
...
"Why does a school district that starts the assignment process so early not finish it before school starts? Administrators say they can’t start assignments until late in the summer because they have to wait for 3,000 students to finish summer school in August to find out who will actually be promoted and who will have to repeat a grade. The school district’s hotline, which fielded 15,000 calls in five weeks, only has a temporary staff of a dozen and only opened in late August.

“When folks get back from their vacations and hotline staff starts making the phone calls, parents are home, they’ve made decisions, it works,’’ said Jerry Burrell, director of enrollment and planning and support. “Any earlier, it just doesn’t work.’’
*******


Here is the Boston Public Schools student assignment policy for waitlists:

• BPS will create wait lists for all schools where there are more applicants than available seats for a particular grade.
• A student’s place on the wait list is based on the registration period when the student applied, sibling priority, the school choices selected on the application, and a random number.
• No student will have a lower place on a wait list than any student who applied in a later registration round, regardless of priorities. However, within each period, a student’s place on the wait list can change if his/her priorities change, which may affect the placement of other students on the wait list. 
• Families registering for any grade, K0 through 12, may be placed on up to three wait lists. Families who are assigned to their second choice school may be on the wait list for their first choice school. Families assigned to their third choice school may be placed on the wait lists for their first and second choice schools.  And families assigned to their fourth choice school or higher, or who are unassigned (kindergarten only) or administratively assigned (see below), may be on wait lists for their top three choices.
• Families may request that a student be added to any wait list (to a school for which they are eligible to apply). However, students may not occupy more than the number of wait lists prescribed above. Students already on the maximum number of wait lists must go off one list in order to be added to another.
• Any student who remains a Boston resident may remain on a wait list after the beginning of the school year, regardless of whether or not the student attends the Boston Public Schools.
• All wait lists expire at the end of the second marking period (January of the following year).

Coming off a wait list

When seats become available, students will be assigned from wait lists in the following order, beginning with students who applied in the earliest rounds:

If the school has not reached its 50% walk zone target, students are assigned from wait lists in this order:

1. Students with sibling + walk zone priority
2. Students with sibling priority
3. Students with walk zone priority
4. Students with no priorities

If the school has reached its 50% walk zone target, students are assigned in this order:

1. Students with sibling priority (no additional priority for walk zone)
2. All other students (no walk zone)

The random numbers assigned to families during registration will be used as "tiebreakers" among students with the same priorities.

From mid-March through mid-August, as seats become available, children are automatically moved off the wait list into their chosen school. Families receive notification about their new school assignment with a letter sent in a mail.

For kindergarteners after mid-August, if a space becomes available at a school with a wait list, families on the wait lists are contacted in order. Families have 24 hours to decide if they want to attend the school. Families are contacted only at the phone numbers they listed on their registration form. This process continues into the school year through January as seats become available.

For students in grades 1 through 12, if a space becomes available at a school with a wait list, families on the wait list are contacted from mid-August through the end of September. After September, families are only contacted about transferring schools where they are wait-listed after marking periods (mid to late November and late January). Families have 24 hours to decide if they want to attend the school and families are contacted only at the phone numbers they have listed on their registration form.

All lists, regardless of grade, expire at the end of the second marking period (January of the following year)."