San Francisco’s public school officials have a ton of homework this year. They checked off one major task two weeks ago, tentatively agreeing to a new contract with teacher and school staff unions.
Next up, the district must solve a complex math problem by crafting a budget that might eliminate schools — or find other ways to account for a years-long drop in student enrollment, which means less state funding.
Amid all this work, the district has also pledged major reforms at every school level: a literacy overhaul in elementary school; a change in math curriculum, including the potential return of algebra to middle school; and in the district’s 17 high schools, rethinking courses, college and career readiness, and admissions — Lowell High’s controversial status in particular.
These three levels of academic reform — elementary, middle, and high school — are all spurred in large part by distressing disparities in outcomes for Black and brown students. After the acrimonious 2022 recall, the new board quickly hired Superintendent Matt Wayne, and they all agreed on a five year plan to boost student performance in the three areas.
All the reform efforts are underway. Here’s an update on where they stand, what’s been recommended, and when SFUSD might make final decisions that will affect every single one of its nearly 50,000 students.
Deeper focus for high schools
In June 2022, the Board of Education created a task force to recommend high school reforms. For many San Franciscans, the core issue is Lowell High: whether the 167-year-old school should switch admissions, currently based on academic performance, to a lottery system like nearly all other SF high schools. (The school board voted in 2021 to move Lowell to a lottery but committed procedural errors, and after the 2022 recall, the new board reinstated merit-based admissions.)
But Lowell is only one piece of the reform puzzle. The task force, which recently issued its recommendations, also weighed in on other schools’ admission policies, suggested more career-focused curriculum across the district, and encouraged strategies to attract and retain educators. The goal is to have 70 percent of 12th graders college and career ready by June 2027, up from 58 percent in 2020.
“Minor adjustments to current practices will not be sufficient, especially to accelerate access and success of students who are and have historically been furthest from opportunity,” the task force wrote.
The recommendations are broad, and Superintendent Wayne and staff are not obligated to accept them.
The main theme is focus. The task force says students should be able to pursue specific academic and career interests via “pathways.” Some schools already have them: Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (SOTA) has creative writing, theater, and dance among its arts pathways. Galileo has STEM-focused programs. At John O’Connell, students dive deeply into culinary arts, building and construction, and more. The task force wants the district to double down on this strategy, as long as the pathways satisfy graduation requirements.
Students should be able to choose “programs within schools, rather than just choosing schools,” according to the document. A student’s interest, rather than skill level, in a subject should be an admissions factor. (The task force suggests moving away from “proficiency” in SOTA’s arts admissions criteria.)
Minor adjustments to current practices will not be sufficient, especially to accelerate access and success of students who are and have historically been furthest from opportunity.
SFUSD High School Task Force
Specifically for Lowell, however, the task force did not side with either merit or lottery admissions. Instead, it recommended a flavor of each. Lowell should either pick students by lottery who show interest and provide extra help for those with different learning needs; or select students via academic criteria, like minimum grade point average, and interest, strengthen outreach to students who qualify, and give priority to middle schools that usually send fewer students to Lowell.
Other recommendations include the following:
- Emphasize project-based learning, including capstone projects and portfolios, “to shift focus across the system away from mere course completion.”
- Make teacher recruitment and retention a top priority.
- Improve information-sharing about schools so that students and families can better understand the special features of each school.
- Strengthen social-emotional learning and support at school.
- Set expectations that all students graduate with a clear plan for the future, which should include more access to career and college support.
The 22-member task force (originally 26) gathered community input at meetings, evaluated schools, and worked with an outside consultant to examine student transcript data and conduct a two-part survey.
Task force member Orlando Leon, a parent of a Herbert Hoover Middle School student, told The Frisc he would have liked more time, but he said the broad recommendations should set guidelines as the district focuses efforts. Leon particularly appreciated the idea of all high schools offering career pathways, and even starting pathways before high school.
Emily Selekman, an English teacher and school site council chair at George Washington High, told The Frisc that new pathways will improve students’ readiness for the future. She agreed with Leon that flexible recommendations should work for a big, diverse district like SFUSD, while also being detailed enough to instigate changes at each school. “I believe that SFUSD is continuing the process toward a positive shift in culture and community that will increase equitable access and allow students and staff to engage in best practices and ultimately lifelong learning,” said Selekman.
The superintendent and staff will amend the recommendations and share a version at a school board meeting in November. The board must approve them, but as of this writing there is no date set for a vote.
Update 11/3/23: Wayne’s own recommendations were posted last night with the draft agenda for the Nov. 14 school board meeting. Among the proposals: For admissions, Lowell should set a minimum grade point average but not consider tests and essays. SOTA’s arts auditions should have more oversight from the central office. And students should have to fill out only one application for all high schools, with a revised process that matches more students with one of their top three choices. The changes would be in place for the 2025–26 school year.
The board will discuss the proposals Nov. 14.
Reading reset in fall 2024
When the new board and Superintendent Wayne began the reform movement in 2022, a literacy overhaul already had momentum. Educators across the country were grappling with evidence that the most popular literacy curriculum for decades, known as whole-language learning, had failed.
The district is now piloting two new reading systems in K-5 classrooms, each of them based on phonics — sounding out words — instead of guessing them based on context, which is the whole-language approach. Based on the pilots, SFUSD will select one for adoption in the 2024–2025 school year.
The two pilot programs were the result of an evaluation process that started in October 2022 with seven curricula. Over four months, 100 educators convened to winnow them down to two.
Justine Yang, a second-grade teacher at McKinley Elementary, which is taking part in the pilot program, told The Frisc last week that both programs are well-written and thorough. Every week in each module or unit, phonics and comprehension skills consistently appear in the stories. “It’s just so much more cohesive” that what the district was using previously, Yang said. “The previous curriculum was very discussion-based on themes and had children guessing the words on the page, rather than teaching them how to actually read words.”
Yang was confident that either option would help literacy rates increase.
Based on test results from the 2022–23 school year, more than 51 percent of third graders met or exceeded the state standard for reading, a slight drop from 2021–22.
Significant achievement gaps remain among Black, Latino and Pacific Islander students, and there’s a long way to go to reach the district’s target of 70 percent of third graders reading at grade level by 2027.
The district is moving on from the old reading system in another important way. The assessment tools to measure students’ progress that SFUSD once used was created by the same group that developed whole-language learning. A new assessment system is now in place.
Some states that have shifted to phonics-based literacy are touting big gains. To know if it’s working here, San Francisco educators and parents will need some patience.
Middle-school algebra problem
The district’s fight over algebra, which hasn’t been taught in middle school for a decade, now includes lawyers. SFUSD’s pledge last year to reevaluate middle-school math didn’t assuage a group of parents, who sued to have the courts put algebra back into eighth grade. The suit was partially rejected this summer, so the parents will have to wait for the district to enact reform.
In 2014, SFUSD stopped offering Algebra I in middle school, citing harm to students who were “tracked” away from advanced math courses at an early age. The district’s own data show math scores in overall decline since then, particularly among Black and Latino students.
In 2015, 48 percent of the district’s eighth grade students met or exceeded the state math standard, but just 13 percent of Black and 21 percent of Latino students met or exceeded it. The pandemic compounded the grim figures. For 2022–23, 40 percent of students met or exceeded the standard, and only 4 percent of Black and 13 percent of Latino students.
As with reading, there’s a long way to reach the district’s target: 65 percent of eighth grade students performing math at grade level by 2027. (Note: the state also uses eleventh grade math levels as a measure, but SFUSD has specifically set eighth grade math performance as its 2027 yardstick.)
Some kids don’t have that foundation in math and may need extra resources, such as tutoring, to become skillful math learners.
Chanel Blackwell, SFUSD parent and math focus group member
SFUSD is also turning to a task force for math. (This one’s called a focus group.) A panel of 32 parents, teachers, and district staff are meeting from October to December and will make recommendations on returning Algebra I to eighth grade for the 2024-25 school year.
“We want to try to solve the problem that some students aren’t ready for Algebra I and some are,” said focus group member Chanel Blackwell, a parent of a A.P. Giannini Middle School student. “Some kids don’t have that foundation in math and may need extra resources, such as tutoring, to become skillful math learners.”
According to three focus group members who spoke with The Frisc — Blackwell, Rex Ridgeway, and Havah Kelley — the group aims to recommend Algebra I as a “math pathway” rather than a requirement, which they say would enhance diversity and minimize the risk of tracking. The group has not released its recommendations yet.
Beyond eighth grade algebra, the district is also conducting an audit of the written math curriculum and classroom observations. It’s scheduled to be completed this December.
The board is scheduled to discuss progress toward the district’s math goals at a meeting in Jaunary. Meanwhile, the focus group’s recommendations will go to the superintendent, whose team will present a plan to the school board in February.
Next year will be a watershed for the district. In March, SF voters will decide whether to approve a $1 billion bond to build and repair schools and facilities across the city. Before summer break, the board and superintendent must make hard budget choices that might include school closures. And when students return in the fall, the proposed reforms at all three levels of school could start kicking in.
The district says 2027 will be the year of reckoning for its reform efforts, but plenty of families and other district stakeholders have already circled 2024 in bright red pen.
