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Popularity matters in school lottery

December 25, 2011

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

December 25, 2011|By Akilah Johnson

Renee Simmons, a first-grade teacher at Higginson-Lewis, waited for parents… (Dina Rudick/Globe Staff )

The principal of Higginson-Lewis K-8 School and one of her first-grade teachers stood amid a swirl of school-shopping families at the Showcase of Schools, waiting to deliver their sales pitch.

Moms and dads barely glanced at the Roxbury school’s display. Only one man made a beeline for the table - and he works at the school. Families that did congregate nearby were just spillover from the crowd waiting to speak with representatives of the “premier schools,’’ as one father put it.

So, Joy Oliver and Renee Simmons stood surrounded by people, yet largely ignored.

“It’s like being a Hilton Hotel in between two Ritzes,’’ Simmons, the first-grade teacher, said of the schools to her right and left, Hernandez K-8 and Kilmer K-8, both with more applicants than prekindergarten seats. The inverse is true at Higginson-Lewis, making it one of the least sought-after schools in Boston - at least according to a school district tally akin to a judge’s score sheet.

The city uses a lottery system that was intended to give all students access to high-achieving classrooms, regardless of neighborhood or life circumstance. But families fixate on a collection of well-known, fiercely sought-after schools, largely ignoring those with lesser reputations. And over the past two decades, popularity has often become a proxy for quality, making it even harder for schools to get off that second rung.

Popularity is driven by parents with time, inclination, and sometimes the means to enter the school lottery early, armed with information and expectations. Their preferences create a system of prized schools, and those in low demand - schools whose reputations have suffered because they are in higher-crime neighborhoods, serve predominantly poor students, and have, in some cases, test scores lower than average.

This stubborn asymmetry in demand makes it that much more difficult for Boston to achieve its goal of school equity and avoiding racial segregation.

The knowing parents who largely drive the process also tend to be those able to afford options outside the system if their child is shut out of the school of their choice. For them, it tends to be top choice, or nothing - and their exit from the system deprives the district of their engagement, fund-raising prowess, and the boost in profile that tends to come from having middle-class parents in a school.

At the popular Hurley K-8 in the South End, parents raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to subsidize arts and science education. The parents have a website that not only includes a wish list but also addresses this question: “I’m still considering private schools or moving to the suburbs for the public schools. Why should I consider the Hurley?’’