Student Assignment Policy Research Partnerships

In support of SFUSD’s work to develop and implement a new Student Assignment Policy, the district has ongoing partnerships with four different research groups.

Technical Policy Design & End-to-End Simulation

Researchers:

• Irene Lo, Assistant Professor of Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University
• Itai Ashlagi, Associate Professor of Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University

Scope:

The Stanford-SFUSD research partnership will primarily be focused on the implementation of Board Policy 5101.2 Elementary School Student Assignment. Multiple research teams will collaborate to explore questions related to the implementation of the policy and work with SFUSD to inform implementation decisions in real time. Stanford will lead the research into zones, assignment rounds, and choice lists, and additional teams may be brought on to explore preference elicitation, human-computer interaction, transportation, bell times, and evaluation of long-run student outcomes. 

Parental Beliefs and Preferences for Schools  

Researchers:

• Damon Clark, Associate Professor in Economics, UC Irvine 
• Paco Martorell, Associate Professor in Education, UC Davis

Scope:

This partnership aims to understand how families choose schools in SFUSD and will also examine the effect of the historical “equity preference” (census tract integration preference, CTIP) on school requests, school assignments, and student outcomes to inform understanding of the effects of any equity levers that SFUSD uses, and also inform other policy decisions such as information provision and program placement.

Family and Community Engagement

Researchers:

• Niloufar Salehi, Assistant Professor in School of Information, UC Berkeley
• Tonya Nguyen, PhD student in School of Information, UC Berkeley

Scope:

The UC Berkeley-SFUSD partnership seeks to inform the design of SFUSD’s new student assignment system by proposing an iterative, human-centered design process that will begin by understanding families’ needs for student assignment through interviews and analysis of existing data. Based on these findings, researchers will develop and conduct a community engagement process to involve families directly in the design of the new system. 

Bell Time and Transportation Analysis

Researchers:

• Sebastien Martin, Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern
• Arthur Delarue, Postdoctoral Fellow, Lyft Rideshare Labs
• Zhen Lian, PhD student in SC Johnson School of Management, Cornell

Scope:

This partnership will contribute to zone development by modeling optimal bell times for various zone scenarios, to ensure that: Each zone includes a range of different start and end times for families to choose from; start and end times are strategically set so that SFUSD can route buses efficiently and transport students to schools throughout their zone; SFUSD maximizes the amount of service that can be provide with a limited transportation budget; and bus routes support SFUSD’s diversity goals for the new student assignment policy.