In most school systems across the country, enrolling children in school is a decentralized, manual process managed by individual schools. This can mean parents have to juggle conflicting deadlines, multiple waitlists, and disparate processes if they are interested in more than one school. In contrast, unified enrollment systems allow families to indicate their school preferences via a single, streamlined application. Families rank their school choices, and the system processes all applications and matches students to schools via a placement algorithm. These algorithms weigh a family’s ranked preference for schools while taking into consideration school-level factors like geographic proximity or sibling preference.

Unified enrollment systems can make enrollment processes easier and more equitable for students and families and reduce barriers to choice. A single, unified process levels the playing field, so that admission to a sought-after school does not rely on a parent gaming the system, lucky timing, or personal connections. 

Unified enrollment systems also have advantages for school and system leaders. Unified enrollment gives school leaders a more reliable indication of their enrollment and budget for the year ahead, and a better understanding of family preferences. System leaders receive valuable data on the supply of high-quality school options and family demand for schools that is not available when schools manage their enrollment processes independently.  

There is a continuum of enrollment systems, with completely decentralized, school-level enrollment on one end, and unified enrollment across all public schools on the other end. In the middle are systems that have unified enrollment for some schools, but not others, or systems that offer families a single application and enrollment deadline, but still allow schools to conduct separate lotteries or enrollment processes.

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