California’s Parent Trigger law has received a lot of media attention lately. However, this is not the only new rule that increases parents’ control over their children’s school. Last year, the California state legislature fast tracked through an Open Enrollment law that would allow students from the state’s lowest performing schools to transfer to a better school, even one outside their home district. Today John Fensterwald - Educated Guess wrote about this new rule in a blog posting, “Fixing Open Enrollment,” arguing that it is basically a good idea that was poorly planned and executed.
One of his criticisms is that there are too many exemptions. For example, the law excludes charter schools and limits Open Enrollment to only 10% of the schools in any district. As a result, some schools are being punished, despite having made test score gains, because they were the lowest performing school in an otherwise high performing district. According to Fensterwald, an amended version of the law, AB 47, would exempt schools with an API score above 700, as well as schools whose API scores increased by at least 50 points. AB 47 also requires that charter schools be included on the list.
Fensterwald argues that Open Enrollment can be a liberator for families trapped in low-achieving districts. However, parents must first succeed in finding and getting their children into a higher achieving school AND have the ability to get their child to that school every day. This will preclude many low income children who rely on public transit to get to school and anyone else who lives too far away from a “better” school. Furthermore, lower income, immigrant and minority families are less likely to have the time, know-how and self-confidence to play the system in the first place. Getting a transfer requires paper work and follow up, and sometimes also requires in-person meetings, appeals, and pestering.
Open Enrollment already exists within many districts in California. One consequence has been a flight of higher achieving and higher income students to the “better” schools within the district and, consequently, a concentrating of lower performing kids in the “bad” schools. San Francisco Unified, for example, has an Apartheid-like system with most of the higher performing schools on the west side, and the overwhelming bulk of lower performing schools on the east side.
The higher performing schools tend to be the most crowded and have the longest waiting lists.
The higher performing schools tend to be the most crowded and have the longest waiting lists.
It is also absolutely essential to understand that “good” and “bad” schools and districts are measures of familial wealth, and do not necessarily say anything about the quality of the teachers or academic programs. Schools and districts that high concentrations of poverty tend to have lower test scores. All that Open Enrollment schemes do is allow families to move their children to schools with wealthier students. They do not necessarily get better teachers or a better quality education. Thus, contrary to Fensterwald’s assertion, Open Enrollment may not liberate parents from anything more than the knowledge that their child is picking up nasty habits from those rabble kids on the other side of the tracks.
