The same admissions processes that leave city parents scratching their heads or, worse, pulling their hair out have put New York City at the head of the pack in a new study ranking districts’ school choice policies.
The report, by the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, which has long pushed for expanded school choice, compares choice policies in place in 25 urban school districts and how families took advantage of them.
New York City came in first, in part because students here are never assigned to schools based simply on where they live. Of the 25 districts, New York was the only one where students are assigned to schools based on applications that asked for families’ preferences, not just their address.
The city has a labyrinthine citywide high school matching process and district-based middle and elementary school admissions processes that many believe could be improved. In a district with more than 1,600 schools (the Brookings report tallies 1,474), the processes are seen as bringing order but also as sometimes pitting schools against each other and limiting options, particularly in high school, for students who aren’t happy with what they’ve chosen.
The Brookings report also gave New York credit for making data about school performance public and closing or restructuring low-performing schools. But its B grade would have been higher if it had more virtual school options and provided transportation when students enroll in schools outside their districts.
To tie in with the report, former city schools chancellor Joel Klein, who bolstered and expanded the city’s school choice policies, is speaking at Brookings’ Washington, D.C., offices today. Klein frequently said, as in an interview below with the libertarian news group Reason, that he wanted to give poor families the kind of school choice that middle-class families have long exercised.