EdPolicyWorks Speaker Series: Francis Pearman

Abstract

School closures, consolidations, and mergers are playing an increasingly important role in school district governance as means to address budgetary challenges or otherwise adapt to new enrollment realities. However, prior research has shown these reorganization efforts often disproportionately affect historically underserved students and communities. There is also evidence that these efforts, if poorly executed, can exacerbate rather than reduce inequalities in educational outcomes. In this talk, I describe a novel approach for incorporating equity considerations into school reorganization efforts, developed through a research-practice partnership with San Francisco Unified School District. I describe two key stages of this framework: (1) the development of school-specific composite scores that combine measures of equity, excellence, and efficiency with qualitative input from community stakeholders, and (2) the creation of a school-selection algorithm that evaluates composite scores based on predefined design principles and strategic objectives. I describe preliminary findings and tensions emerging from this work, how it corresponds with recent legislation in California designed to minimize disproportionality in school closure decisions, as well as the potential replicability of this model for other school districts facing similar budgetary and enrollment challenges. 

Speaker Bio

Francis A. Pearman is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. His research focuses on how poverty and inequality shape the life chances of children, especially in rapidly changing cities. Dr. Pearman is especially interested in how large-scale, complex datasets might be leveraged to uncover new insights and open novel avenues of inquiry in the field of education. His research has been published in a variety of academic journals, including American Educational Research Journal, Review of Educational Research, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and Sociology of Education. He has also written for the Brookings Institute and Education Week. Pearman holds a B.S from the University of Virginia and a M.Ed. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University.