School choice in Denver: early reports

Denver has rolled out its new school choice system, and here are some news stories about the results:

DPS school choice program accommodates most students
"In the first year using a new system that centralized school choice applications within Denver Public Schools, a vast majority of students were able to get into their top picks.
"We're seeing enrollment increases all across the city and are thrilled to be serving more Denver families and seeing the high level of participation in SchoolChoice," DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg said

DPS’ SchoolChoice worked – for most
"Nearly 70 percent of the 23,000 families who participated in Denver Public Schools’ new streamlined enrollment process got into their top choice schools, DPS leaders announced Monday.
"Meanwhile, 80 percent got into their first or second choice school and 83 percent got a spot in their first, second or third choice.
"It was unclear whether the participation in school choice increased this year over previous years, but several parents interviewed said the system seemed more fair and easier to navigate – with less gaming of the system by well-connected parents."

And here's a video news report.

(And here's the IIPSC project page that includes Denver.)

School choice and medical residency matching in Forbes

I was in New York City yesterday for an IIPSC-organized conference on school choice, and it was a nice coincidence to see that Forbes had an article on school choice and other matching processes, that mentions IIPSC.

Prerna Sinha writes about deferred acceptance algorithms, in the medical match and in NYC high school choice: Quantifying Harmony: The Matchmaking Algorithm That Pairs Residents With Hospitals, Students With Schools

"In 2003 Professor Roth (Stanford), who has played a major role in the dissemination of the deferred acceptance algorithm, worked with Atila Abdulkadiroglu (Duke) and Parag Pathak (M.I.T.) to replace the broken high school match system that was previously in place in New York City.Roth realized similar to a stable marriage or residency-student match, a high school-student match would work if individuals and schools were permitted to select alternative options after their most preferred options were rejected.

He is confident that the deferred acceptance algorithm provides a significant improvement over the system that was previously in place, but he believes the school choice system could work better. He clarified, “... there is a problem with how to disseminate information to families about schools.” He also suggested that there would be less congestion and it would be a more efficient process if all charter schools and private schools participated too.
...
 Roth continues to work closely with Neil Dorosin, who was the director of high-school admissions in New York City at the time of the redesign. Dorosin is now the Executive Director of Institute of Innovation in Public School Choice (IIPSC), and Roth sits on the advisory board. IIPSC is a team of specialists in the design and implementation of enrollment and school choice systems. The organization helps communities integrate the latest market design research and technology to solve school choice problems.

Roth calls Dorosin the “Johnny Appleseed” of getting systems like the one in NYC into New Orleans, Denver, and Washington.

Dorosin told FORBES, “Public school choice, this two sided matching market where there are two interested parties (schools and students), exists all over the country, in every big city and most small cities too. In most cases the systems that are set up to organize that two sided matching market, unintentionally, are failing. Failing the kids and the families that are supposed to use them, failing the systems of schools that are supposed to be administering them.”

Private dealings between parents and schools, limited resources and information for some parties, and congestion caused by lack of centralized communication are examples of market malfunctions that lead to disorganized systems.

According to Dorosin, the market design approach (deferred acceptance) addresses the central problem of matching students with schools: high school seats are a scarce resource that needs to be allocated efficiently and transparently in a manner that allows students and parents to feel safe when participating.

Parents and students need to feel safe in listing their preferential choice of schools, free of fear that ranking School A as a top choice will hurt their chances of getting into School B, their second choice. Efficiency involves getting optimal results on the first try and avoiding numerous offers or back and forth between parties. Transparency would allow lottery numbers, school information, and reports about outcomes to be easily accessible by all in a centralized location.

Dorosin says, “These are the elements that lead to a better system. We call this universal enrollment.”

The deferred acceptance algorithm, which is the basis of Dorosin’s universal enrollment concept, has a proven track record with the students of New York City and medical residents across the country. It may yet have applications beyond those it has now. At the very least, you can expect urban districts around the country and possibly around the world to continue to adopt some of the principles."

OneMatch for Indianapolis schools opens today

Here's an article that I think does an unusually good job of explaining both the benefits of a unified enrollment school choice system, and some of the objections it is facing as it is introduced.

1 Application Will Cover Enrollment For IPS And Indy Charter Schools  by ERIC WEDDLE.

"A new online enrollment system for families to enroll their kids in grades K-12 for the 2018-19 school year at Indianapolis Public Schools and most Marion County charter schools begins Wednesday.

"The so-called common enrollment process is a major shift for city parents and schools. Families will longer fill out separate paperwork for IPS magnet schools and neighborhood schools, or need to remember a smattering of enrollment deadlines among dozens of charter schools.

"Instead, families will log on to a website, pick the schools they want to attend, rank them in order by preference and wait to find out which school their child will attend. The first enrollment round begins Wednesday, Nov. 15, and ends January 15. Enrollment results will be announced February 15

"Cities, including Denver and New Orleans, offer a variation of the one-application approach. Support in Indianapolis has come IPS, the Mayor’s Office, most of the city’s charter schools and local education reform group The Mind Trust.

"As the new system has been rolled out some have raised concerns over the complexity and transparency of the process. 

"Caitlin Hannon, founder of Enroll Indy, the local nonprofit managing the OneMatch enrollment system, says it creates equity by simplifying where families get information about schools and using a computer algorithm to match a child with an open seat.

“It doesn't matter who your parent is,” Hannon says about how students are selected to attend schools with long waiting lists.  “It doesn't matter who you know or how much money you have or if you bake brownies for the school secretary.”

"The technology behind the system is similar to what is used for National Resident Matching Program through which most American doctors get their first job, according to the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice which creates the algorithm used by OneMatch.

"Families are expected to use Enroll Indy’s website to find a school that matches their need and interest, such as it academic performance, after-school care and transportation options.

"Though OneMatch, also part of the Enroll Indy website, families can choose up to ten schools they would want their child to attend and rank the schools in priority.

"The algorithm factors in priories associated with each student -- such as whether they live in a pre-drawn school boundary zone, if a sibling already attends a school and if a parent works for IPS -- and assigns a random lottery number.

The system runs everyone’s choice at the same time and fills open seats based on those factors, Hannon says. IPS will no longer offer waitlist positions for programs that reach capacity. Rather, Hannon says, students will be assigned their top option based on availability.

“This is not about putting you in a school that isn't a school that you want,” says Hannon, a former IPS School Board commissioner. “This is about you telling us what you want, the priorities of the school, and your random lottery number. Those are the only three factors.”

"Unlike in the past, Hannon says, the system will also explain to families why they did not get the school they wanted.

"The new system requires all schools taking part to use a single enrollment application, follow three enrollment windows and use a random lottery process to select which students make it into popular academic programs.

"But not all Indianapolis charter schools are taking part, including Christel House Academy.

Carey Dahncke, head of schools, says the charter network is taking a wait-and-see approach to OneMatch for its two schools.

“Our enrollment has been strong, so the idea of changing practice just didn't seem necessary,” he says.

"Phalen Leadership Academy also did not sign on but two IPS innovation schools managed by the company will use OneMatch.

"The two networks will continue to enroll students using their own system and deadlines.

"The IPS Community Coalition, a group critical of ongoing changes within IPS, has described the OneMatch system as being akin to the dystopian Hunger Games series. In a recent Facebook post, the group said the enrollment system dictates schools choice, not the parents.

"The parents only provide the list of 10. This starts to look like some strange robotic, authoritarian system of the allocation of scarce resources (the 'good' schools), kind of like the Hunger Games. This looks like an inhumane system, not a parent and child-friendly one," the group wrote.

"In a public response, Hannon disputed the notion that families are not choosing their schools.

"We don’t decide anything for families -- they just apply and we run a lottery -- the same way it’s been done for years but in a more efficient place so families don’t have to apply all over the city," she wrote.

"Enrollment for 2018-19 will be held during three rounds: Nov. 15 - Jan. 15 with results on Feb. 15; Jan. 16 - April 15 with results on May 15; April 16 - June 15 with results on June 30. Late enrollment starts July 1.

Enrollment for IPS preschool students will continue to be handled by the SchoolMint application system."

Brookings Education Choice and Competition Index 2013

The Education Choice and Competition Index Background and Results 2013

Rank Districts by Overall Grade                                                         Rank Districts by Availability of Alternative Schools Score                                                         Rank Districts by Virtual Schools Score                                                         Rank Districts by Popularity of Schools Reflected in Funding Score                                                         Rank Districts by Restructure or Close Undersubscribed Schools Score                                                         Rank Districts by Assignment Mechanism Score                                                         Rank Districts by Application Score                                                         Rank Districts by Comparable Standards and Assessments Score                                                         Rank Districts by Gain Scores Calculated Score                                                         Rank Districts by Accessible On-line Information Score                                                         Rank Districts by Relevant Performance Data Score                                                         Rank Districts by Understandable performance data Score                                                         Rank Districts by Transportation  Score                                                         Rank Districts by District School Quality Score
	Rank	School District	Grade	County	Student Population	No. of Schools
	1	Recovery District	A	Orleans Parish, LA	47,493	126
	2	New York City	A-	New York County, NY	1,150,795	2,431
	3	Orleans Parish	A-	Orleans Parish, LA	51,042	119
	4	Houston	B	Harris County, TX	220,754	471
	5	Denver	B	Denver County, CO	87,147	229
	6	Minneapolis	B	Hennepin County, MN	46,165	122
	7	Washington DC	B-	District Of Columbia, DC	72,875	295
	8	San Diego	B-	San Diego County, CA	146,207	309
	9	Tucson	B-	Pima County, AZ	66,505	215
	9	Chicago	B-	Cook County, IL	427,945	961

...

Executive summary:

"The United States is in the middle of a K-12 education revolution that is characterized by many dramatic transformations — among them, a shift toward more choice by parents in where their children are educated with public funds. This shift is signified by, among other things, the growth of public charter schools, the adoption of open enrollment systems for public schools, the expansion of statewide voucher programs, and continued increases in the availability of technology-based distance/virtual education.

"Although the expansion of choice in education is driven by a widely-recognized market model, which posits that allowing students and their families to choose schools and backpack their public funds will force education service providers to innovate and compete on the quality of their product, there is little available information about the current state of school choice in American education. For that reason, the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings compiles an annual Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI) of 100+ U.S. school districts. The ECCI is based on scoring rubrics within thirteen categories of policy and practice that are important to the availability and quality of choice and to the competition created by choice among providers of education services.

"Based on these scoring principles, the Recovery School District in New Orleans and New York City Public Schools occupy the highest rankings on the 2013 ECCI, with scores of 83 and 73 points out of 100, respectively. Both districts occupied those same rankings in 2012, illustrating a larger trend uncovered by the ECCI: districts demonstrate little year-to-year change in their commitment to or design of school choice. The correlation between this year’s and last year’s aggregate district scores is 0.95. There are, however, exceptions. Denver dramatically improved its ranking, moving from 24th to fifth place, based on its implementation of a unified application process for all its public schools, including charters.

"Despite their high rankings, the Recovery School District and New York City, along with all other top-scoring districts, need improvements. And, as demonstrated by the 34 districts that received an “F” grade, zip code assignment and other policies antithetical to choice still represent standard operating procedure for many school districts across the country."

School choice among different kinds of schools

Chalkbeat on the changing face of school districts, and the role played by universal-enrollment school choice:

A ‘portfolio’ of schools? How a nationwide effort to disrupt urban school districts is gaining traction

"Several years ago, Indianapolis Public Schools looked like a lot of urban school districts. The vast majority of students attended traditional public schools, though enrollment was dwindling, and the district had an adversarial relationship with its small but growing number of charter schools.

"That’s no longer true. The district is actively turning over schools to charter operators, and it’s rolling out a common enrollment system for district and charter schools that could make it easier for charters to grow. Nearly half of the district’s students now attend charters or district schools with charter-like freedoms.

...

"A growing number of philanthropists, advocates, and policymakers say the way to improve schools is to upend the traditional school district. Usually pointing to the same cities as models — Indianapolis, along with Denver, New Orleans, and Washington D.C. — they want to see more charter schools and more district schools run like charter schools.

...

"Another piece of the portfolio playbook is supporting enrollment systems that allow families to easily choose among district and charter schools.

"Adding new schools and new choices can make things harder on parents, who must navigate several enrollment processes to make a choice and get assigned to a school. Common enrollment systems create a single place to navigate it all — while also ensuring that all parents are exposed to new schools, and making it especially clear to district leaders which schools are attracting the fewest students.

“In addition to efficiency for families, unified enrollment helps the system make better decisions about which schools to replicate, recruit, incubate, scale, and maximize and, perhaps, where to locate them,” according to an Education Cities report.

"Denver, New Orleans, and Washington D.C. all have common enrollment systems, and Indianapolis just adopted one. In Denver, the use of a streamlined system did in fact increase enrollment in charters among low-income students and English-language learners, though in New Orleans parents said it was actually harder to navigate initially."

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

School choice: fewer kids getting first choice may be a sign of success

Here's a report from Denver: Fewer top choice placements in Denver’s school selection process

Denver’s SchoolChoice process is a three-year old initiative billed as “one form, one timeline, all schools,” which aimed to make school enrollment fairer. Parents submit up to five choices for potential schools. Those who do not participate or do not get one of their five choices are automatically enrolled in their neighborhood school. This year is the first since the system’s launch in 2011 in which the number of participants who received a top choice declined.

"District officials are trying to figure out what caused that drop. One theory is that more people applied to the district’s most competitive programs.


“Even though there are fewer participants, more people may be pursuing high quality programs,” said Brian Eschbacher, who heads the district’s planning and choice department. That, he said, is the goal of the process: for parents to be able to choose the best program for their children."

School choice discussion in Indianapolis

The Indy Star has the story:
Will Indy adopt central enrollment system for schools?

"A group is developing a one-stop enrollment system for Indianapolis schools but will the city’s largest education provider take part?

Indianapolis Public Schools leaders are weighing whether to join Enroll Indy, a nonprofit with plans to launch a unified enrollment process for IPS schools and charter schools within the district’s boundaries by next year.

The goal: Help parents find a school for their children in a city with growing options that feature charter schools, innovation network schools, magnet programs and more.

So far, IPS hasn’t made any commitments, though moving toward such a system is among the district’s priorities, IPS Superintendent Lewis Ferebee said.

“Whether Enroll Indy is the best fit for IPS to go down that path is to be determined,” Ferebee told IndyStar. “The concept itself could definitely benefit our families.”

Advocates for a central enrollment system say the way parents now shop for schools is disorganized. To find the best fit, parents must juggle different application deadlines and know what programs are out there, a daunting task with the city now playing host to more than 40 charter schools.

Wealthier families can find the process easier to navigate, placing lower-income families at a disadvantage, organizers say.

“If we’re going to say we have choice,” said Caitlin Hannon, Enroll Indy’s founder, “everybody should have equitable access to that choice.”

Hannon, a former IPS School Board member, said the group is hoping to launch its first application process next fall for the 2018-19 school year. But first it needs buy-in from the city’s schools, and Hannon started making her pitch to IPS this month.

A 2015 report by the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice found that the city’s schools are in “intense competition to enroll students.”

“There is no incentive for IPS, for example, to tell parents about charter schools. Or for Ball State University to ensure families understand the IPS magnet school application,” according to the report. “In both cases, doing so would not be in their best self-interest. For families, though the distinction between authorizers is less important. Parents are looking for the best school for their child, regardless of who runs it. For them, not having the information in one easy-to-access place doesn’t make sense.”

Families would apply through Enroll Indy to any participating school, where they’d rank their school preferences and be matched with a program.

Hannon said families would be asked their priorities, such as location and where siblings attend. Students are then matched to the school “they want the most that they can get into, based on those priorities,” Hannon said.

“I like to explain it as all schools lotteries happening at the same moment…,” she said.

An analysis of a similar system run in Denver Public Schools found not enough seats existed in high-performing schools to serve demand. That meant students often were assigned to lower-performing schools than initially requested.

But the system would come with perks, Hannon said. Parents would no longer have to hold spots for their children at multiple schools, making it easier for administrators to plan staffing needs...."

Matching and more: Continuing Education at the AEA meetings in Philadelphia

2018 Continuing Education, January 7-9, 2018, Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown

The AEA's 2018 Continuing Education Program will be held at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown on January 7-9, 2018, immediately following the close of ASSA. Participants can choose from three concurrent programs. Registration now open. (Alternatively, download PDF Registration form.)

Matching Market Design

Atila Abdulkadiroglu (Duke University)

Atila Abdulkadiroglu joined the Department of Economics at Duke University in the Fall of 2006. He taught at Northwestern University and Columbia University before coming to Duke. He received his PhD in Economics at the University of Rochester. His research has led to the design and implementation of better admissions policies in school choice programs in the US, He has consulted several school districts in redesigning student assignment systems, including Boston (MA), Chicago (Il), Denver (CO), New Orleans (LA), New York City (NY). His current research also focuses on economics of education. He is a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a National Science Foundation CAREER award. Abdulkadiroglu serves as an Editor-in-Chief of Review of Economic Design. He serves on the board of The Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice.

Nikhil Agarwal (MIT)

Nikhil Agarwal is the Castle Krob Career Development Assistant Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has been teaching since 2014. He completed his PhD in Economics at Harvard University in 2013, and was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University. Agarwal specializes in the empirical study of matching markets. He has developed tools that have been applied to labor markets, education markets and organ allocation systems.

Parag Pathak (MIT)

Parag A. Pathak is the Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics at MIT, found­ing co-director of the NBER Working Group on Market Design, and founder of MIT's School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative (SEII), a laboratory focused on education, human capital, and the income distribution.  Pathak has helped to design the Boston, Chicago, Denver, Newark, New Orleans, New York, and Washington DC school choice systems.   His work on mar­ket design and edu­ca­tion was garnered numerous recognitions including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the 2016 Social Choice and Welfare prize.  He has also authored leading studies on charter schools, high school reform, selective education, and school vouchers.  Pathak is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and has served on the editorial boards of Econometrica, American Economic Review, and the Journal of Political Economy.

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Machine Learning and Econometrics

Susan Athey (Stanford University)

Susan Athey is the Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business.  She received her bachelor’s degree from Duke University and her PhD from Stanford, and she holds an honorary doctorate from Duke University. She previously taught at the economics departments at MIT, Stanford and Harvard. Her current research focuses on the economics of digitization, marketplace design, and the intersection of econometrics and machine learning.  She has worked on several application areas, including timber auctions, internet search, online advertising, the news media, and virtual currency. As one of the first “tech economists,” she served as consulting chief economist for Microsoft Corporation for six years, and now serves on the boards of Expedia, Rover, and Ripple.  She also serves as a long-term advisor to the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, helping architect and implement their auction-based pricing system.

Guido Imbens (Stanford University)

Guido Imbens is Professor of Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. After graduating from Brown University Guido taught at Harvard University, UCLA, and UC Berkeley. He joined the GSB in 2012. Imbens specializes in econometrics, and in particular methods for drawing causal inferences. Guido Imbens is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Guido Imbens has taught in the continuing education program previously in 2009 and 2012.

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DSGE Models and the Role of Finance

Lawrence Christiano (Northwestern University)

Larry Christiano's research has been focused primarily on the problem of determining how the government's monetary and fiscal instruments ought to respond to shocks over the business cycle. This research has two parts: one involves formulating and estimating an empirically plausible model of the macroeconomy, and the second involves developing economic concepts and computational methods for determining optimal policy in an equilibrium model. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Thomas Philippon (New York University)

Thomas Philippon is Professor of Finance at New York University - Stern School of Business. Philippon was named one of the “top 25 economists under 45” by the IMF in 2014, he won the 2013 Bernácer Prize for Best European Economist under 40, the 2010 Michael Brennan & BlackRock Award, the 2009 Prize for Best Young French Economist, and the 2008 Brattle Prize for the best paper in Corporate Finance. He was elected Global Economic Fellow in 2009 by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He has studied various topics in finance and macroeconomics: financial distress, systemic risk, government interventions during financial crises, asset markets and corporate investment. Recently his work has focused on the evolution of the financial system and on the Eurozone crisis. He currently serves on the Monetary Policy Advisory Panel of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, and as a board member and director of the scientific committee of the French prudential regulator (ACPR). He was the senior economic advisor to the French finance minister in 2012-2013. Philippon graduated from Ecole Polytechnique, received a PhD in Economics from MIT, and joined New York University in 2003.

IIPSC: the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice

Over at the Dell Foundation (which funds a lot of work on public school choice), they have a Q&A on school choice and enrollment: Neil Dorosin and Gaby Fighetti from The Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice

"The Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice (IIPSC) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to support groups of people in cities in designing and implementing school choice and enrollment processes. They work with consortiums of people in cities to bring them through a process they call market design: creating a group of policies and operations that, when taken together as a whole, govern the way kids apply to and are accepted to schools.

IIPSC is hosting a conference on May 20, 2015 where education leaders from all over the country will gather to immerse themselves in unified enrollment theory and practice. Practitioners from cities that have already implemented or are implementing unified enrollment – Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Newark, Oakland, and Washington DC – will be on hand to share their knowledge and experiences. The goal is for all participants to emerge from the conference with a concrete set of knowledge and tools to use in advancing this critical work in their own cities.

Neil Dorosin is the Executive Director and Gaby Fighetti is the Deputy Executive Director of IIPSC. Read more about their work below.

...

How has IIPSC effectively launched this current reform movement with unified enrollment?

Neil: IIPSC principals first worked together in New York City in the very early Joel Klein years, and in this environment there were almost no charter schools. This illustrates that the ideas within unified enrollment are not specific to any particular type of school- charter schools, district schools, non-public schools, etc. They are ideas that allow administrators to serve families better. To bring efficiency, equity, and transparency to enrollment and choice systems.

When we began working with Denver we realized that what we were doing requires district and charter sectors to work together in a whole new way, and these changes are fundamental to the way cities manage school choice and then hopefully implement portfolio reform strategy. We are committed to political neutrality and always make sure that people in cities know that our work is meant to advance healthy choice processes, not to advance any political position. We love the fact that people in cities all over the country now see the ideas and guiding principles of unified enrollment systems as things that they believe in and want to advance in their cities.

Tell us about the team who helped design the unified enrollment system.

Neil: Al Roth shared the Nobel Prize in economics for applying matching theory science to solve real world problems. Most famous examples include the Medical Residency match (matching residents and hospitals), kidney donor exchange programs (identifying compatible pairs of donors and recipients from VERY long waitlists, and saving many lives), and for unified enrollment work.Parag Pathak was his student, and is now a full professor at MIT. Atila Abdulkadiroglu co-wrote the seminal paper on the market design approach to school choice in 2003 and joined Al and Parag in the first schools project – in New York City in 2003. Al, Parag and Atila are all now members of our advisory board and active participants in our projects with cities.

It turns out that matching science can be adapted to solve these and other problems, and to make people’s live better in real and meaningful ways. We are motivated by this every day."

School choice in Washington DC: some schools jockey for position before the start...

Here's some news on charter schools joining the new DC school choice system, or not...

Some charters opt out of unified enrollment lottery

"All DCPS schools and most charter schools have agreed to a common enrollment lottery that will take effect for school year 2014-15. The new process will cut down on duplicate applications and student reshuffling at the beginning of the year. Why, then, have some charters opted not to participate?

"For years now, observers of the DC education scene have been calling for a unified enrollment process, either for all charter schools or for both charters and DCPS schools. The benefits seem clear: parents will be able to file a single application and rank schools in the order of their preference. Schools will no longer find students leaving in September as they get into other schools off waiting lists, or simply decide they would be happier at another school where they also secured a spot.

"But when the deadline for joining the common lottery arrived at the end of September, a dozen charter schools were missing from the list. The charters who are participating account for nearly 90% of charter slots, but the ones who opted out include some highly sought-after schools, such as Washington Yu Ying and Latin American Montessori Bilingual (LAMB). Clearly, some parents will continue to apply to those schools separately, in addition to or instead of applying through the common process.
...
"Patricia Ragland, the enrollment coordinator at Tree of Life PCS in Ward 5, said the school draws many of its students by word-of-mouth or because their siblings are already enrolled. The school's executive director decided not to participate in the unified lottery because it would have made it easier for families to find other options, Ragland said.
...
"As for LAMB, a Tier 1 school in Ward 4, its Executive Director, Diane Cottman, said in an email that the school is "hesitant to join a system that has not yet been finalized."

"With a more cautious approach," she wrote, "LAMB hopes to avoid the uncertainty that comes with a work in progress."

But, as project manager Bhat points out, DC is not the first city to implement a unified enrollment lottery. Denver and New Orleans have had similar programs in place for several years, and New York has instituted a common application system. And the same company that designed all three of those systems, the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice, is designing the one in DC. Newark and Philadelphia are also working on plans for common lotteries."

Indianapolis schools discuss universal enrollment

Market design first steps: Report: IPS, Indy Charter Schools Should Use Same Enrollment Application

"A report out this week is urging the Indianapolis Public Schools district and city charter schools to consider partnering on a one-stop-shop approach for enrollment.

What the report found, basically, is enrolling in an Indianapolis public school -- be it IPS or a charter -- can be bewildering process for parents to navigate.

Students applying to an IPS magnet school have a different steps of enrollment based on whether they are new or returning to the district.

Some charters require in-person applications while others allow online submissions. The deadlines for all public city schools are not the same.

“If you think about applying for college, trying to navigate different deadlines and applications -- that is what it looks like for parents now in Indy,” said Caitlin Hannon, executive director of Teach Plus in Indianapolis which commissioned the a study of enrollment processes for IPS, charter schools and their authorizers.

The report, written by the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice, says the IPS enrollment system and efforts by the city and local nonprofits to promote school options still leave parents and others confused.

Nathan Ringham, an IPS parent quoted in the report, said there is no one source to review deadlines, requirements or other issues related to enrollment.

“I shouldn’t have had to go to the state department of education to figure out the birth date cutoff for kindergarten,” he said. “I shouldn’t have to go to one page to see how we enroll as a new student and then another to see how to enroll in a magnet.”

In addition, enrollment projections by schools have been below target in past years because schools are unsure where students will attend until the school year begins. When teachers are hired months earlier based on flawed enrollment projections projections, they wind up being transferred to other schools or seeking another job, according to the report.

The institute and recommends that the city to consider a so-called common enrollment process. So rather than apply for multiple schools, a parent could fill out one application and rank their preference.

Cities, including Denver and New Orleans, offer a variation of the one-application approach that also provides information about each school, such as academic performance, so parents can compare schools.

“If the first choice is an IPS school and second is a charter and third is another charter -- that is fine,” Hannon said about how a common application would be filled out. “Then all of those would go into a lottery process where an algorithm is built and people are given their preferences by the way they have listed them and based on the requirements of each school.”

Data that could be collected in an open enrollment, Hannon said, could be used to identify whether a charter school is "creaming" -- taking the best students who apply -- or if students from one part of the city are seeking schools outside their neighborhood boundries. 

IPS Superintendent Lewis Ferebee has recently said he is open to discussing the common application."