Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Angelika On August 18th this year in San Francisco, legions of five-year-olds attended kindergarten for the first time. The summer vacation had ended and a new school year had begun. Although Americans use the German word "kindergarten" for preschool, their concept differs radically from the German education system. In the U.S., kindergarten constitutes the year before first grade, while in Germany, kindergarten is several years of simple and playful daycare for three to five-year-olds. It's not surprising that in the U.S., kindergarten facilities are often located at the preschool buildings. Lately, I've been visiting various preschools as part of my job, where I'm accompanying autistic children to regular kindergartens. I was blown away to see how seriously the young kids are at work cramming facts, instead of enjoying their playtime!
It really is all work and no play. Attending children are scribbling letters of the alphabet, explore reading their first words, deal with numbers and are sitting at classroom desks. Back in my day, obviously quite a long time ago, this is what we only learned later, in school. Some kids clearly have a hard time dealing with this approach. But just like in Germany, there's lots of politics involved when it comes to dealing with the school system, and elected officials love playing around with it. California, for example, proposed the "Kindergarten Readiness Act" in 2010, which pushed out the age by when children must be attending kindergarten. With this measure in place, four-year-olds no longer needed to be sitting in class with five-year-olds, which makes sense, because at this age, differences in development happen quite rapidly. In 2013, the measure was enacted, and only kids who turn five on or before September first can now be registered for kindergarten.
But there's another option for children who were born between September 2nd and December 2nd: They may attend "transitional kindergarten" for a year to bridge the time before going to kindergarten for a year, after which they enter first grade. However, neither transitional kindergarten nor kindergarten are mandatory in California, the only requirement is starting school at age six. Despite that, most kids go to kindergarten, however, because otherwise there's a good chance they would be left behind.
But I digress, what I really wanted to write about is San Francisco's seemingly absurd system to determine which of the various city kindergartens a child can be registered at. To be clear, the following statements only refer to San Francisco's public school system. Private schools or other cities or counties have their own rules and regulations. Back in the days when I went to school in Germany, everyone went to the school in their neighborhood. That's very different today in San Francisco, because here a computer algorithm combined with a lottery determines the appropriate kindergarten for every child. The underlying idea is to open the opportunity for every child living in the city to attend a kindergarten and later a school of their choice. This way, so the school district's argument, children with the same ethnic background won't be concentrated in one school, but every school will get their share of mixed backgrounds, so that for example in a predominantly Asian neighborhood, the nearest school won't be occupied exclusively by Asian children.
During the application process, parents create a ranked list with San Francisco schools of their choice for their kids. There's no limit to how long this list can be. The computer then first tries to assign every parent their first choice. However, as the popular schools fill up, the algorithm then favors children whose siblings are already attending the particular school. Next in line for the popular schools are children from poor neighborhoods with high crime rate, as their schools typically score low on standardized tests. The next priority are children who already attended the particular school's transitional kindergarten. The implementation of this system seems quite absurd to some and causes lots of heated debates.
If a family is living in a neighborhood featuring a highly desired kindergarten, it is every unlikely that their kids can actually attend it if they don't fit in any of the categories above. As a result, many parents desperately try to game the system. For example, it may be a good strategy to avoid listing their first kindergarten choice at the top of the list, if it is a highly desired school in their neighborhood. There's online forums for parents exclusively dedicated to maximizing the chances to get their kids into best possible kindergarten.
In any case, it's a lot of work and stress for the parents, because it's not sufficient to only evaluate the neighborhood's nearest kindergarten. What's worse is that despite the lottery, statistics show that in 25% of all schools the populace won't mix and it's attended by children with predominantly the same ethnicity. One reason for this phenomenon is that in bad neighborhoods with poorly rated schools, parents often don't find the time, or lack the means and the verbal skills to understand the lottery system or even get informed about schools in other neighborhoods. The often choose the easy way and select the poorly rated neighborhood school as their first choice, which they're promptly assigned. It's obvious that San Francisco's school lottery system still needs a lot of work.
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