Alberto Del Rio has two kids at Cesar Chavez Elementary School and doesn’t believe in labeling such places as bad schools. “All the schools in the Mission have a bad reputation,” he said.
Unfortunately, the California Department of Education’s Persistently Lowest Achieving School list bears the name of no less than five Mission District schools. Mission High School, Horace Mann and Everett Middle schools and Bryant and Chavez elementary schools all face the very real prospect of either closing down, switching to a charter school or firing principles and some staff. That is, if those schools want to qualify for additional state funding to help bring up test scores.
For his part, Del Rio isn’t sure that test scores are the best way to assess kids; especially if they are still learning to speak English. “It’s so political,” Del Rio said. “How do you play with children’s lives?”
Nancy Gapasin Gnass works for the Parent Advisory Council, which reports to the San Francisco Board of Education. She said there is no easy answer for Del Rio’s question. “What’s most important is for parents to be involved in their kids’ education,” Gnass said. The Board of Education has responded in part by altering its school assignment policy.
In other words, if you live in a part of town where the test scores are low, you have a good chance of getting into a high achieving school if you choose that school as your first choice. Del Rio, who’s active in the Chavez parent group, said he was “more of an atmosphere person.”
“(Chavez) is lower scoring, but it’s a great place to be,” he said.
The new policy goes into effect for the 2011 school year and will mostly affect the high achieving schools that have limited seats and high numbers of requests. If you live on Shotwell Street for example, and want your elementary student to attend Rooftop Elementary, you will have priority if you live in a census tract with low test scores. The old system looked more at family income or whether or not you lived in Section 8 housing, for example.
The new system focuses more on your census tract and if you live near the school. Ten census tracts cover most of the Mission district and if you live in all but one of them, then you have priority under the new system. The area roughly between Bryant, Cesar Chavez, 23rd Streets and highway 101 has slightly higher test scores.
Another reason the district altered the school assignment policy was because the old system was confusing. Parents could choose any school for their children, but if there weren’t enough seats available, then the assignment policy kicked in. It’s like a tie-breaker system. If 400 kids want to go to one school, but there are only 375 seats available, who gets in?
The system that has been in place since 2002 gives the seats to those who have older siblings at the school. If those 25 kids all have older sibling at the school, then a whole confusing set of tie-breaking measurements are set off. Under the new system, which starts in the 2011 school year, there are fewer of those confusing tie-breaking rules. The sibling rule lives on, but after that the only thing taken into account is census tract and then proximity to the school.