Improving Diversity and Equity in San Francisco School Choice

More than 65 years after school segregation was ruled unconstitutional, public schools across the United States are resegregating along racial and socioeconomic lines. Many cities have attempted to disentangle school and neighborhood segregation and improve equitable access using policies for city-wide choice. However, these policies have largely not improved patterns of segregation and inequity. From 2018 to 2020, we worked with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to design a new policy for student assignment system that meets the district’s goals of diversity, predictability, proximity and equity of access. In close collaboration with SFUSD, we informed the design of a new policy that was approved in 2020 for use starting the 2026–27 school year. In this talk, I will discuss our policy design approach, as well as questions it raises about algorithms, market design, and equity.

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