Seattle School District hopes to roll out new student-assignment plan
By 2008, the Seattle School District hopes to roll out a new student-assignment plan to replace one officials say is too complicated and too expensive and leaves too many students in poorly performing schools. And sometimes, demographic quirks create over-enrolled schools, leaving parents fuming. District officials are asking for public comments on how to proceed with a new system, but they are saying little about what that may look like. Seattle's current "open-choice" system works like this: Parents enroll their student in the district and list at least three choices of schools. If there isn’t enough space, a series of tiebreakers goes into effect to grant students admission to overbooked schools. The first tiebreaker is a sibling enrolled at the same school, followed by geographic region for elementary and middle school only (high schools are open citywide); special programs such as language immersion; distance from school; and lottery. Until 2002, the district also used a student's race as a tiebreaker at the high-school level. That approach is the subject of a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last month, school board member Michael DeBell began circulating a proposal that would assign every household an elementary, middle, and high school, though parents could apply to send their kids to other schools. That would provide families with predictability, which Mr. DeBell says today's system lacks. Schools with excess demand would set aside 10-20% of seats for open choice by citywide lottery. Schools that aren't attracting enough students must come up with a way to improve. While he supports the district's diversity tiebreaker, James Kelly, president of the Urban League, says race has dominated the discussion about education, and it's time to focus on improving academics for all students. "I don't care what color you are, children deserve to be more than a formula," he says. "Whatever the outcome in the Supreme Court, we can't continue to formulize kids. We need 10 high-performing, high-quality high schools." Mr. DeBell also notes that Seattle spends about $27 million on transportation, much more than other districts. But expenses aren't driving the current push for change, he says. Instead, it's a question of fairness. Because state funding is allocated on a per-student basis, Mr. DeBell argues that schools with declining enrollment receive less money, which limits offerings such as art, music or tutoring. And the system is perceived to be unfriendly to middle-class parents, which hurts the district's market share, he says.
Seattle Times
By Alex Fryer
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: Information on the Seattle and Louisville cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court is below.]
[NSBA School Law pages on diversity cases]