STUDENT ASSIGNMENT

By Richard W Van Loon

How students are assigned to our public schools can determine whether families with children will want to live in our beautiful city or take their children somewhere else.

While diverse schools are a desirable social outcome, we cannot expect parents to be satisfied sending their children to diversity-balanced, low-performing schools. Rather than continuing to drive families out of the city by promoting diversity, we should raise the quality of education in low-performing schools and offer parents more good schools to choose from. Diversity will then be achieved naturally through voluntary parental choice.

In the event we need to assign students, I propose to revise the assignment index to use student's academic levels as the main criteria. In order for children to be able to develop to their fullest potential, they should be placed in schools and classes most appropriate for their academic level.