SAQ Fellows at the City Learning Visit
In May 2024, MIT Blueprint Labs’ School Access and Quality Fellows met in New Orleans, LA (NOLA) for the City Learning Visit, an annual event in which Fellows learn about one city’s enrollment systems and practices. The event marked the end of Blueprint’s fourth annual SAQ Fellowship.
Building an enrollment community
Blueprint began the SAQ Fellowship in 2019 to create a space for education leaders invested in building equitable enrollment systems to share best practices, build community, and solve challenges. Equitable enrollment systems help ensure that all children can access high-quality schools and that families know about all the opportunities available to them. As public school enrollment drops nationwide, these leaders face urgent and growing challenges; building a community of practice is essential. For one year, SAQ Fellows join virtual and in-person events to discuss ways to address declining enrollment, effectively engage families, and leverage enrollment data to better serve students and schools.
The 2023–2024 Fellowship cohort includes leaders from school districts, charter management organizations, state agencies, and nonprofits. Their roles vary—from directors of school support to coordinators of enrollment to managers of data analytics—but they all share a passion for equitable enrollment.
Learning from New Orleans
On May 30–31, Fellows traveled from across the country to dive into all things New Orleans. Through two days of presentations, panels, and discussions, Fellows learned about NOLA’s unique school district, which until recently was entirely composed of charter schools.
On the first day of the visit, Fellows learned about the history of the New Orleans school district, from the first public schools in 1841 to the implementation of unified enrollment—a centralized system in which families can apply to all schools in a region through a single, streamlined application—in the late 2000s. Fellows then listened to a candid conversation between several New Orleans education leaders who were integral to the implementation of unified enrollment. They discussed the political and logistical challenges involved in instituting a new system.
On Day 2 of the City Learning Visit, speakers from New Orleans Public Schools and other organizations presented about communications in an all-charter school district, public funding for early education, and the district’s planning efforts amid declining enrollment. Fellows also learned how the district measures school quality and conveys that information to families. Several speakers presented challenges they face and crowdsourced ideas from the Fellows.
In one of the last sessions of the visit, Jamie Carroll from the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans highlighted some of her organization’s enrollment research. One study finds that centralized enrollment in New Orleans increased the share of non-white students enrolled in high-demand schools. Another study shows that geographic priorities—policies through which a school’s admissions favor students from nearby neighborhoods—tend to benefit white applicants over Black applicants.
Looking forward
As the event wound to a close, Fellows reflected on their year in the Fellowship. Sarah Briggs, Director of Access and Enrollment for Chicago Public Schools, spoke about how, in her role, “you want to do things in an efficient way, but you also want to do things in an equitable way.” Learning from other Fellows’ experiences has helped her ensure that she and her team “keep families and their experiences front of mind.”
Steve Osborn, Student Opportunity Officer for the Rhode Island Department of Education, emphasized how much he appreciated the community that the Fellows had built. “It’s just a really thoughtful group of people…. Being able to come together and test ideas with folks who have also had that shared experience has been really exciting and really valuable.”
Joining SAQ
Interested in joining the 2024–2025 School Access and Quality Fellowship? Applications are now open and will close on July 10, 2024.