School Choice
Every year, OUSD runs an enrollment lottery for student placement across the district for the following school year. Families submit applications for their top choices in the winter and receive a school assignment offer letter in the spring. Families can elect to accept or decline the assignment generated by the lottery. Note that all applicants are also placed on waitlists for those schools that they ranked higher than the school for which they received an offer. In the 2018-19 school year, we began running multiple lotteries following the initial lottery run. These were created to ensure that unclaimed seats from the initial lottery would be available to families who submitted applications after the first lottery deadline.
Demand Rates
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We calculate demand rate as the # of on time first choice applications submitted by the first lottery deadline for each school's entry grade level (TK+K, 6, or 9) divided by the # of students who are enrolled in the school in that grade level on census day in October of year following application submission. Demand rates provide an approximate way to measure how many more or fewer families submit 1st choice applications than seats that are filled. A % above 100% means that more families applied than enrolled. A % below 100% means that fewer families applied than enrolled.
Demand rates were last updated on 01-25-21. |
Offer Priority and Live/Choose Data
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Live/Choose Tables provide two different ways to look at lottery applications and offers. The priority view shows on time first choice applications according to their initial lottery outcome (offers, waitlists) and applicant priority (sibling + neighbor, sibling, neighbor, or neither). The prior school view shows the number and percentage of on time first choice applications according to the prior school of the applicant.
You can view the number of on time 1st choice applications by priority and outcome for prior years using this google sheet. |
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The Live/Choose Map dashboard shows a map of the on time first choice applicants to the entry grade of the selected school. A table below the map(s) shows the number of applications for all grades at the school and the breakdown according to # and % of applicants who received an offer vs. were placed on a waitlist.
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Advanced Comparisons
As we develop more ways to look at school choice across Oakland, additional dashboards will be added here. One resource that is already available for prior years is the Strategic Regional Analysis, which contains information on a variety of measures including school choice up to the 2017-18 school year.
For comments or questions about school choice in OUSD or inquiries regarding the dashboards here, please email Kaia Vilberg at kaia.vilberg@ousd.org. Last update of this web page was completed on 01-25-21.