The district’s student assignment process promotes and supports family
choice to the maximum extent possible. Since the District began its current
student assignment system in 2002-2003, the vast majority of students have
received one of their choices in Round One, with a high percent receiving their
first choice. For the 2009-10 school year:
• 80% of kindergarten applicants received one of their choices
• 90% of sixth-grade applicants received one of their choices
• 83% of ninth-grade applicants received one of their choices
Overall, 61% of applicants at the kindergarten, sixth, and ninth grade levels received their first choice in
Round One for the 2009-2010 school year:
• 64% of kindergarten applicants received their first choice
• 80% of sixth-grade applicants received their first
• 62% of ninth-grade applicants received their first choice
K, 6, 9 Students Assigned to a Choice School
K, 6, 9 Students Assigned to Their First Choice School
Any student can apply to any SFUSD school. Parents/guardians are strongly
encouraged to list 7 schools; 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.
The most significant determinants of a student’s school assignment are parental choice and school capacity. Since SFUSD allows any student to apply to any school, there may be situations where there are more requests than openings. For example, for the 2009-2010 school year, Clarendon had 66 seats available for new kindergarten students. 11 younger siblings were pre-assigned, leaving 55 seats available for non-sibling applicants. There were 1,128 applicants for Clarendon’s Kindergarten class, which means there were approximately 20 applicants for every available seat at Clarendon.
Whenever requests are greater than the number of seats available, SFUSD uses a process called the Student Assignment System to determine which students get an assignment offer. The Student Assignment System is a formula, made up of five race neutral factors, that calculates the probability that in a given grade randomly chosen students will be different from each other based on the five race neutral factors.
Designation Process
Whether students receive one of their school choices depends on a range of factors, including the number of seats available at the schools chosen, the number of students requesting those seats, the number of siblings who get pre-assigned, the ranking of the choices, the diversity of the applicant pools for the schools listed and, in some instances, the application of the Student Assignment System.
If a student does not get assigned to one of their choices through the Student Assignment System, 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 Student Assignment System is not used to assign students to schools they did not list on their application form.
The Student Assignment System Factors
These are the five factors and accompanying questions SFUSD uses to create
each student’s profile.
• Extreme Poverty: Does the student live in public housing?
Is the student a foster youth? Does the family participate in a homeless program?
• Socioeconomic Status: Does the student participate in any
of the following programs: free/reduced lunch, CalWORKS, and/or public housing?
• English Proficiency: Is the student proficient in English? This is determined by the answers to the Home Language Survey on the application form and by language assessment. Any student who lists a language other than English on the Home Language Survey will be assessed in English and in the primary language as available.
• Academic Performance Rank of Sending School: Is the Academic
Performance Index ranking of the student’s current school 4 or above?
The California Department of Education ranks every public school in California
by academic performance, and assigns each school an Academic Performance Index
(API). Note: this factor is excluded for Kindergartners.
• Academic Achievement Status:
- Incoming Kindergartners: Did the student attend preschool?
- Students entering grades 1-12: Did the student score above
or below the thirtieth (30th) percentile on the
most recent standardized test of record?
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.
There is no ideal profile! The goal is to create classrooms that have
students with different profiles.
Facts about the Student Assignment System
• The system is only used when there are more requests than seats available.
• The system does not use race or ethnicity to assign students to schools.
• If students can be assigned to more than one school, they will always be assigned to their highest choice school. You are strongly encouraged to list 7 schools; 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.
• The system was designed to create programs/grades where the students are different from each other based on the five diversity factors.
• The five different factors have been demonstrated to correlate with academic achievement.
How the Student Assignment System Works
1. After placement of younger siblings and students with program needs, the system looks at all grades/programs where there are more requests than seats available and counts how many seats are available.
2. The system averages the "profiles" of all the pre-assigned students to create a "base profile" for the program/grade.
3. The system divides the students who have requested the program/grade into two groups: students who live in the schools’ attendance area and students who live outside the schools’ attendance area.
4. The system selects students living in the attendance area and assigns the student whose profile is the most different from the base profile in the grade/program.
5. The base profile is recalculated, to include the profile of the student just assigned.
6. The system recalculates how many seats remain for assignment, and the process is repeated until students from the attendance area no longer contribute diversity to the base profile or no more seats remain for additional placements.
7. When students from the attendance area no longer contribute to the diversity of the base profile, all students who requested the grade/program are considered for assignment.
8. The system recalculates the base profile by including the profile of the last student assigned and assigns a student whose profile is the most different from the base profile.
9. This process continues until there are no more seats available.
