FALL 2015
decentralization of enrollment facilitated
‘cherry-picking’ of students, in which
schools not chartered as magnets would
prioritize the enrollment of academically
talented students over struggling students.
Thus, vulnerable students were further disadvantaged as a result of the broad autonomy granted to schools by decentralization.
Cherry-picking and difficulties with inschool registration have been largely neutralized with the adoption of the OneApp
in 2011. The OneApp is an online registration system that matches students to
schools based on ranked parental preferences. If no spot is available at a family’s
first choice school, the OneApp algorithm
will consider the next choice. This system
allows families to maximize their child’s
chance of gaining a spot in a preferred
school without onerous transportation or
time commitments. Significantly, the OneApp, which has improved access and thus
equality in school registration, is a centralized system that involves some forfeiture of control by the individual schools.
However, despite the access improvements of the OneApp, access issues persist
among many of the most highly regarded
charter schools. In a widely circulated oped piece, longtime New Orleans education reformer Jacob Landry explains that
“with admissions tests, multiple mandatory meetings and in-person delivery of
applications, it is small wonder why fewer
than 50 percent of students at Lusher [a
selective New Orleans charter school] are
minorities, and why only 21 percent of its
students are economically disadvantaged.
By contrast, 98 percent of [Recovery
School District] students in New Orleans
are minorities, and 92 percent are economically disadvantaged.” The disproportionately small enrollment of disadvantaged
students at elite, selective schools such as
Lusher is troubling. Disproportionalities
will inevitably occur in a system wher