Unrelated to your article, but regarding high schools - is there any way to obtain safety / disciplinary data about the high schools? Safety is a core concern of mine as I look at high schools for my kids.
You can get data on things like suspensions. I haven't written about it because it's so hard to know how to interpret it. If school X has a higher suspension rate than school Y, is school Y safer (they have fewer suspensions so they must have fewer incidents!) or is school X safer (they take discipline seriously and suspend troublemakers!)? SFUSD conducts annual school climate surveys and publishes the results. Have a look at them. Having said that, your best approach may be to talk with current students and staff at the schools you're considering.
This is fascinating. Thank you for the deep dive into the data. Any idea why Lincoln is so much more popular than Washington and Galileo? In my research into academic outcomes, I thought that Lincoln and Washington were comparable.
I think the main reason is probably location. SFUSD kids are not evenly distributed across the city but are heavily weighted towards the southern end which would make Galileo and Washington hard to reach. It's also possible that Washington, for example, is seen as "too Asian" whereas Lincoln's demographics are much closer to the district average.
Evaluating a school based on academic outcomes is hard because you have to adjust for the quality of the incoming students and that information is just not public. A huge percentage of the students in the district who score 5 on AP tests are at Lowell but is that because of the environment and teaching at Lowell or because of Lowell's selective admissions? We don't know if a student who scores at the 85th percentile, say, on the SBAC tests does better at Lowell than at Lincoln or Washington or Mission. That's a study I'd love to perform if I had the data.
Too Asian? Lincoln is 49% Asian. Versus 57% at Washington. That does not seem like big difference.
I would guess the cognitive elite will do just as well at Lincoln or Washington as they would at Lowell. It is just that Lowell has more of them. Lincoln and Washington have a good selection of AP classes to choose from.
Sorry I missed it. I always use the enrollment figures published by the California Department of Education. Their numbers are based on the count as of one particular census day that is standard across the state. I believe it is the first Wednesday in October. I don't use the 10-day count because it's an internal SFUSD number that is not published anywhere that I've found. It would be interesting to compare the two.
Thanks for this really informative article. I have a question for you about your "Kindergarten Yield" section. You're comparing numbers of kids assigned to schools in first round with numbers of kids who "later enrolled" in the school. At what point in the assignment cycle are you pulling the enrollment data? Is it the students who accepted their first round assignment? (which families have to do by enrolling in the school, even though they may also go into second round or waitlist round and be jockeying for a different enrollment up through the first two weeks of the new school year). Or are you counting "enrolled" students as those who actually held seats at the school in kindergarten after the 10 Day Count? I'm curious about this as I've been tracking assignment/enrollment yield ratios loosely at my own kids elementary. It seems like, qualitatively, what's happening is that there are frequently families assigned to our school who had put our school lower down on their list as a backup, enroll for Kindergarten at our school because they see it as a "just-in-case, while we wait for something better" option. They treat it like an acceptable-for-now backup school, but they're trying up the first weeks of school to secure a seat at a preferred school, and some may even put in for Spring transfer. It's a bummer for us as a school community trying to form cohesion and bonds in the early grades because everyone's trying to figure out who are the families who are there because we really want to be there and are ready and willing to invest in the community, and who are the ones who are saying they are really happy at the school while they're busy scrambling for an alternative to hop to at the 11th hour. Those seats could have gone to other families who wanted our school as their first choice in the lottery but they didn't get it, and once they're settled elsewhere not many end up backfilling the seats left empty by the families who used our school as a fallback placeholder until they got what they really wanted elsewhere.
In re: "2nd Round" for Lowell HS (as contemplated by end of The Enrollment Process section and the discussion regarding the 1/3 increase in allocated seats at Lowell):
My reading of the Lowell HS admissions policy says that there is no second round. If you didn't make the cut, you didn't make the cut. See https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=AZS28M7BDEA9 and the section on "Offers of Admission". Is there a different reading or different prevailing policy or are you aware of further specifics as to how these policies are carried out that can inform us as to what actually goes on? Thanks!
> a child who is in TK in a school has priority to stay in that school for k-5
Can you double check this? I believe this is only true for a child whose TK was also their neighborhood assigned school. I ended up asking this exact question at the school fair this year and received that response.
Fantastic article by the way! I love your deep dives on these topics.
Lincoln and Giannini may be more popular because they are perceived as safer. In a safer neighborhood. I assume most Asians in the Sunset would make them their first choice.
In my neighborhood people decide to accept public or move to private school based on the school they are assigned to. Almost any on the West Side are acceptable. Almost all on the East Side are not. Public schools have also been used as a backup in case they were not accepted by the private school.
In one case they were accepted by Clarendon only a mile away but were accepted by St. Brendon’s a couple of blocks away. In another case they did not get Lincoln close by but were assigned to Mission. They selected a private school saying they were not about to send their son to a school with gangsters.
Unrelated to your article, but regarding high schools - is there any way to obtain safety / disciplinary data about the high schools? Safety is a core concern of mine as I look at high schools for my kids.
You can get data on things like suspensions. I haven't written about it because it's so hard to know how to interpret it. If school X has a higher suspension rate than school Y, is school Y safer (they have fewer suspensions so they must have fewer incidents!) or is school X safer (they take discipline seriously and suspend troublemakers!)? SFUSD conducts annual school climate surveys and publishes the results. Have a look at them. Having said that, your best approach may be to talk with current students and staff at the schools you're considering.
Thank you so much!
This is fascinating. Thank you for the deep dive into the data. Any idea why Lincoln is so much more popular than Washington and Galileo? In my research into academic outcomes, I thought that Lincoln and Washington were comparable.
I think the main reason is probably location. SFUSD kids are not evenly distributed across the city but are heavily weighted towards the southern end which would make Galileo and Washington hard to reach. It's also possible that Washington, for example, is seen as "too Asian" whereas Lincoln's demographics are much closer to the district average.
Evaluating a school based on academic outcomes is hard because you have to adjust for the quality of the incoming students and that information is just not public. A huge percentage of the students in the district who score 5 on AP tests are at Lowell but is that because of the environment and teaching at Lowell or because of Lowell's selective admissions? We don't know if a student who scores at the 85th percentile, say, on the SBAC tests does better at Lowell than at Lincoln or Washington or Mission. That's a study I'd love to perform if I had the data.
Too Asian? Lincoln is 49% Asian. Versus 57% at Washington. That does not seem like big difference.
I would guess the cognitive elite will do just as well at Lincoln or Washington as they would at Lowell. It is just that Lowell has more of them. Lincoln and Washington have a good selection of AP classes to choose from.
Hey @Paul, I’m still really curious about the answer to my question, but I think maybe you never caught my comment?
Sorry I missed it. I always use the enrollment figures published by the California Department of Education. Their numbers are based on the count as of one particular census day that is standard across the state. I believe it is the first Wednesday in October. I don't use the 10-day count because it's an internal SFUSD number that is not published anywhere that I've found. It would be interesting to compare the two.
Thanks for this really informative article. I have a question for you about your "Kindergarten Yield" section. You're comparing numbers of kids assigned to schools in first round with numbers of kids who "later enrolled" in the school. At what point in the assignment cycle are you pulling the enrollment data? Is it the students who accepted their first round assignment? (which families have to do by enrolling in the school, even though they may also go into second round or waitlist round and be jockeying for a different enrollment up through the first two weeks of the new school year). Or are you counting "enrolled" students as those who actually held seats at the school in kindergarten after the 10 Day Count? I'm curious about this as I've been tracking assignment/enrollment yield ratios loosely at my own kids elementary. It seems like, qualitatively, what's happening is that there are frequently families assigned to our school who had put our school lower down on their list as a backup, enroll for Kindergarten at our school because they see it as a "just-in-case, while we wait for something better" option. They treat it like an acceptable-for-now backup school, but they're trying up the first weeks of school to secure a seat at a preferred school, and some may even put in for Spring transfer. It's a bummer for us as a school community trying to form cohesion and bonds in the early grades because everyone's trying to figure out who are the families who are there because we really want to be there and are ready and willing to invest in the community, and who are the ones who are saying they are really happy at the school while they're busy scrambling for an alternative to hop to at the 11th hour. Those seats could have gone to other families who wanted our school as their first choice in the lottery but they didn't get it, and once they're settled elsewhere not many end up backfilling the seats left empty by the families who used our school as a fallback placeholder until they got what they really wanted elsewhere.
In re: "2nd Round" for Lowell HS (as contemplated by end of The Enrollment Process section and the discussion regarding the 1/3 increase in allocated seats at Lowell):
My reading of the Lowell HS admissions policy says that there is no second round. If you didn't make the cut, you didn't make the cut. See https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=AZS28M7BDEA9 and the section on "Offers of Admission". Is there a different reading or different prevailing policy or are you aware of further specifics as to how these policies are carried out that can inform us as to what actually goes on? Thanks!
> a child who is in TK in a school has priority to stay in that school for k-5
Can you double check this? I believe this is only true for a child whose TK was also their neighborhood assigned school. I ended up asking this exact question at the school fair this year and received that response.
Fantastic article by the way! I love your deep dives on these topics.
Currently yes, but as of 24-25 school year TK enrollment is a tiebreaker regardless of residency. In 25-26 no reapplication to K necessary.
Lincoln and Giannini may be more popular because they are perceived as safer. In a safer neighborhood. I assume most Asians in the Sunset would make them their first choice.
In my neighborhood people decide to accept public or move to private school based on the school they are assigned to. Almost any on the West Side are acceptable. Almost all on the East Side are not. Public schools have also been used as a backup in case they were not accepted by the private school.
In one case they were accepted by Clarendon only a mile away but were accepted by St. Brendon’s a couple of blocks away. In another case they did not get Lincoln close by but were assigned to Mission. They selected a private school saying they were not about to send their son to a school with gangsters.