School choice has become increasingly common in the US education system. The most common implementations are:
- Zoned school choice
- Complete school choice
- Geographically preferred school choice
Zoned school choice is characterized by overlapping SAZs, where an additional process is used to determine the school to which a student is ultimately admitted.
Under complete school choice, students are admitted to any school in the district as long as there is sufficient capacity at that school.
The geographically preferred school choice model gives students residing in close proximity to a school preference over those students in the district who live further away.
For purposes of the School Boundaries product, school choice means that students and their families can choose, in one capacity or another, which public schools in their district they will attend.
Because of the array of methods in which districts implement school choice, we offer an attribute, associated with the school point that, over time, will allow users to identify which schools participate in a choice program. This true/false attribute field will be populated gradually, as we identify schools that participate in a choice program during regular maintenance activities.