San Francisco Unified measures “college and career readiness” in a lot of different ways. Some students take AP credits or college courses. Others find internships and job training programs.
In the last year, readiness scores have stayed pretty static at SFUSD, with some concerning dips for students of color.
But this year, one group of kids at SFUSD showed dramatic improvement:
“There was a noticeable increase of 11 percentage points for unhoused students,” Superintendent Maria Su said at last night’s school board meeting.
The district has nearly 360 students who are unhoused or “highly mobile” — kids who don’t have a fixed, regular place to sleep. This also includes families living doubled up, runaways, and folks in shelters, hotels, and SROs.
About 38% of them now qualify as prepared. This is higher than the state average for homeless students.
Staff think it has to do with targeted outreach. Last year, central office and individual school sites made more efforts to inform families — especially those with seniors — about extra supports available to them like financial aid, and basic needs resources.
Currently about 40% of SFUSD’s student body still isn’t prepared, including the majority of homeless students. They’re still figuring out how to reach them all.
“We're going to test and try, and test and try,” said Su. “We don't know if there's a secret recipe here, but we're going to try and see what our principals and site leaders would need, and then we're going to try to figure out how we can staff it.”
They’re also debating whether the ultimate goal — to have 70% of all students ready for college and career — is even possible. They’ll revisit this number in January.
