| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 5/24 |
| 2006/1/22-24 [Reference/BayArea] UID:41476 Activity:moderate |
1/21 SF schools better than San Jose or even Berkeley:
http://csua.org/u/eqe
\_ Who said SJ or "even" Berkeley had great schools? Anyway, the
other problem with SF that compounds the distribution problem
mentioned below is that you don't have a choice which school your
kid goes to. You could easily end up with your child having an
hour+ commute each way to HS every day to a shitty school.
\_ What the FUCK? Could you provide either and explanation or
a link to an explanation for those of us who've never lived
in SF please? Is this random selection at all merit based?
\_ I think the pp is talking about http://csua.org/u/eqo .
I notice that geographical proximity to the school is not
part of the Diversity Index Lottery calculation. Worse,
the academic preformance of the sending school is. So if
you get screwed once on the school you're assigned to, the
screwing will tend to continue as you continue to make your
way through the school system.
\_ Wow. I'm speechless at the level of stupidity here. Isn't
this what they tried in Boston in the late 60's which led
to a parent revolt? Wasn't this the wedge issue that helped
Nixon win the 72 election?
\_ Remember this thread started with a claim that parents
are leaving SF partly for educational reasons. Would
you put your kids in the SFUSD?
\_ I didn't really pay attention to how the thread
started. And hell no. If I had kids, I wouldn't
even consider taking part in what ammounts to a
communist/fascist approach to education, just on
principle, even if my kids were allowed to go
to the best school. I didn't realize just how
far off the deep end of communist ideology the fucks
who ran SF were.
\_ Seconded. I have a friend who has a 2 year old daughter; they
live in Noe Valley across the street from an elementary school.
If SF lets her go to that school, she's a public school kid.
If not, it's private school. Driving her to Bayview every day ...
not going to happen.
\_ There's some quote about lies and statistics, I think. The problem
with SF high schools is the distribution, not the average. Out of
15 SF high schools, 5 have a ranking of 2 or 1 (out of a possible
max of 10). http://csua.org/u/eqf
\_ Although, to be fair, the top 5 enrollment high schools in SF
had rankings (in enrollment order) of 9, 10, 9, 6, and 5. The
low-scoring schools are generally smaller. You can't punish SF
for the performance of Newcomer High.
\_ Well, it does matter, insofar as Lincoln and Washington
(the 2 9's in your list of large schools) are highly impacted
and Lowell (the 10) has a separate application process. Many
students are therefore shunted to mediocre or worse schools.
\_ Isn't that common knowledge? Since when were San Jose or Berkeley
known for having top high schools? |
| 5/24 |
|
| csua.org/u/eqe -> www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/22/BAG5QGRAK21.DTL Email This Article The San Francisco public schools have a math problem: Students outperform those of all other large, urban districts in the state, but children are leaving -- in droves. In fact, kindergarten enrollment in the city's schools dropped by 6 percent between 2001 and 2004, even though the birthrate five years earlier was steady, according to a recent study by the Public Research Institute at San Francisco State University. So it doesn't take an honor student to see that if San Francisco's enrollment continues to plummet, there will be more wrenching decisions like the ones reached Thursday night when the Board of Education agreed to close or move 14 schools. More puzzling is why so many families are leaving, and what the schools can do, if anything, to get them to stay. The district of 56,578 students has been losing up to 1,000 students per year for five years, the school board says, and the trend is expected to continue. To figure it all out, a group of middle-class parents in the city's Potrero Hill neighborhood last month asked about 140 families in an anonymous e-mail survey why they had moved away. "With the housing prices what they are, I would hope for public schools with a better reputation than those in SF seem to have," wrote one person. "(We) felt that if we stayed in the city, we would have to send our kids to private schools, and we could not afford to do that. SF schools feel very 'inner city' in a negative way," wrote a third. In all, 70 percent of the respondents said housing prices caused them to leave the city. "That was huge," said Isabel Samaras, a survey respondent who agreed to be named. Her family moved to Albany so their 5-year-old son, Nico, could be assured of attending a neighborhood school. "We were most concerned that if we were locked into San Francisco with a mortgage, then if we got a school that was too far away or we didn't like the way it was run, we'd be trapped," Samaras said. Like many parents, she expressed frustration with San Francisco's school lottery system, which often bars children from attending their own neighborhood schools. School quality and the lottery system were two complaints that came up again and again in the parents' survey. For years, parents have been unable to contribute much to the debate about the controversial lottery system. That's because the school board discussed the issue behind closed doors, calling the student assignment system an offshoot of ongoing desegregation litigation begun in the early 1980s. But parents can expect to have a greater role in the discussion from now on, because the litigation officially ended last month, and discussions will now be conducted openly, said Sarah Lipson, the board's vice president. As for school quality, the San Francisco Unified School District scored 745 on the last Academic Performance Index, with 800 considered excellent on the 200- to 1000-point scale. By contrast, Los Angeles scored 649, San Jose 737, and Berkeley -- where many families have fled to, according to the Potrero Hill survey -- 737. The message about San Francisco schools that a growing number of parents are trying to send is this: If you try them, you may like them. "I'm not a Pollyanna, but I really don't run across people who are really disappointed," said parent Lorraine Woodruff-Long. After deciding to send her two children to the once-undesirable Miraloma Elementary, Woodruff-Long not only found that her children were getting a good education, she became convinced that other middle-class families should rediscover the city's public schools. She became executive director of the San Francisco chapter of Parents for Public Schools, a national group tackling similar middle-class flight issues across the country. In that role, she and the group's expanding membership have tried to show parents that there are excellent urban schools they may never have heard of -- or schools waiting to become excellent. "Parents need to separate facts from fiction," said Woodruff-Long. "We really face an uphill battle with perception versus reality." Almost no middle-class children from their neighborhood attended their local public school, Daniel Webster. But encouraged by former Mayor Art Agnos, a neighbor, to consider the possibility of sending their babies there in a few years, the parents contacted the principal -- and suddenly found themselves working side-by-side with the school's lower-income families to save Webster from closure. All were thrilled Thursday night when the board agreed to keep the school open. "The perception exists that there are no good options except private school for middle- and upper-middle-class children -- so we need to show that there are good schools in San Francisco," said Stacey Bartlett, whose daughter, Annabel, is only 7 months old. She said her hope is to turn the district's public relations department into a true marketing arm for the city's schools. "Public relations -- that's one area we've really dropped the ball on," she said. When students leave, revenue drops, and district officials say they've lost $5 million in one year alone. "I feel like I've been hit by a truck," said board member Mark Sanchez, who said he and the other board members are already planning strategies to make future closures seem, if not easier, at least more fair to all demographic groups. So as the school board tries to stanch the outflow of dollars by closing schools, parents like Bartlett, Woodruff-Long, and even Lipson, also a parent, say they will try to stanch the outflow of departing families. Yet, as every student knows, math is unforgiving when it comes to the numbers. Daniel Webster Elementary was saved from closure -- for now, said board member Jill Wynns. She pointed out that the members of the Potrero Hill Parents Association have about 100 children younger than age 5 among them -- or an average of 20 additional children who could enroll in Webster each year for the next five years. "And that's not going to be enough to fill the school," Wynns said. |
| csua.org/u/eqo -> portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page=policy.placement.process Educational Placement Center > Assignment Process Student Assignment Process SFUSD's current student assignment process is required by the October 24, 2001 court order and is part of SFUSD's comprehensive plan to remedy segregation and discrimination in the school district and achieve Excellence for All. Our innovative student assignment process gives parents choice, ensures equal access to adequate instruction, and promotes diversity. Any student can apply to any public school in the city (or, any school in the District). The District's student assignment process promotes and supports family choice to the maximum extent possible. Since SFUSD allows any student to apply to any school in the city, there may be situations where there are more requests for spaces than seats available. For example, in Round 1 for the 2005-06 school year, Clarendon had 987 kindergarten requests for 80 seats, West Portal had 901 kindergarten requests for 90 seats, Hoover had 1,573 6 th grade requests for 395 seats, Presidio had 1,378 6 th grade requests for 375 seats, Lincoln had 3,373 9 th grade requests for 580 seats, and Washington had 3,124 9 th grade requests for 550 seats. We encourage families to list as many choices as possible on their application form to increase the likelihood that they will receive one of their choices. We also encourage families to visit many different schools to find some of those hidden gems to list on their application form. Whenever requests are greater than the number of seats available, the District uses a process called the Diversity Index Lottery to select some students over other students. The Diversity Index Lottery is a formula, made up of six race neutral factors, that calculates the probability that in a given grade randomly chosen students will be different from each other based on the six race neutral factors. The Six Diversity Index Factors These are the six factors and accompanying questions SFUSD uses to create each student's profile: * Socioeconomic Status: Does the student and/or the student's family participate in any of the following programs: free/reduced lunch, CalWORKS, and/or public housing? This is determined by the answers to the language survey questions on the application form. The California Department of Education ranks every public school in California by academic performance, and assigns each school an Academic Performance Index (API). The answers to these questions are gathered from information provided on the application form and from test score data supplied by the California Department of Education. The goal is to create classrooms that have students with different profiles. Facts about the Diversity Index Lottery * The index is only used when there are more requests than seats available for a program, in a grade, in a school. selecting a higher number of schools will increase the likelihood of receiving a requested assignment. Parents who do not list up to 7 choices run a higher risk of getting assigned to a school they did not request. How the Diversity Index Lottery Works 1 After placement of younger siblings and students with program needs, the index looks at all grades/programs where there are more requests than seats available and counts how many seats are available. Designation Process If a student does not get assigned to one of their choices through the diversity index lottery process, SFUSD designates the student to a school with openings. SFUSD considers the student's home address as well as SFUSD's transportation infrastructure when selecting a placement for students who did not get one of their choices. The diversity index lottery is not used to assign students to schools they did not list on their application form. FAQ/Help | * An asterisk next to a link denotes a link to a Web site that is NOT part of the SFUSD Web site. These links are intended only for the convenience of our visitors; SFUSD does NOT maintain, nor necessarily endorse the content of the linked Web site. |
| csua.org/u/eqf -> api.cde.ca.gov/reports/page2.asp?subject=API&level=County&submit1=submit Change Text Size: Normal Text Medium Text Large Text California Department of Education DataQuest API County List of Schools Reports Please select a county below - press submit to continue Select County: Submit |