Lauren Goldstein, despite being a product of New Orleans public schools and a career educator, is a mom of two fumbling through the role of parenting as it relates to local schooling.
NAVIGATING THE NCAP (ONEAPP)
It’s that special time of year. Temperatures are dropping below 80°, spirits are getting festive, parents are getting loose with the “Santa’s watching!” threats. This can only mean one thing: Time to place your bets in the cutthroat gambling system of New Orleans Public Schools’ Common Application Process (NCAP). The stakes? Your child’s academic future.
That’s hyperbole, of course, but no less representative of how this process feels to the families engaging in it. Formerly known as OneApp, the NCAP was the response to the admissions chaos resulting from the decentralized charter school landscape that formed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Between the hurricane’s aftermath and 2012, individual schools each managed their own application process, leaving families with the burden of making sense of a web of school options and jumping through admissions hoops for separate applications. The situation was rife with inequities—some schools even required that families submit applications in-person and would check identification to verify that the applicant’s guardian was the one dropping it off! The introduction of OneApp, and then NCAP, was not without its kinks, but it did significantly streamline New Orleans Public Schools admissions, and even the most selective magnet schools eventually had to participate, despite years of doubling down on their exclusive processes.
But in what comes as a surprise to exactly no one, a smoother application process has not been the antidote for families’ anxiety when NCAP season rolls around. The application is simply a tool, a ticket granting entrance into a daunting lottery where an unlucky outcome can make you feel like your kid will languish in a failing school and you yourself have failed as a parent. NCAP is not the reason for our dread; it is merely a symbol that represents what’s really at the source—the nerve-wracking truth that children in New Orleans are not guaranteed access to a good school. Even the most fair, efficient process can’t counter the centuries of systemic inequity, racial segregation, and financial divestment that have led to this reality.
So if you find yourself paralyzed and defeated while staring down the barrel of the NCAP this month, take comfort at least in knowing that is the only correct response to the hellscape on display here. If validation is what you seek, there is a small city’s worth of public school applicants who are in your same, overwhelmed shoes. But if having a strategic approach to filling out the NCAP will help quell the nightmare of our reality, I offer this set of Tips and Tricks for Navigating our Educational Dystopia, or: A Guide to the NCAP. These are in the form of questions I am asking myself throughout the process as an applicant this year. And while I’m no expert, this isn’t my first NCAP rodeo and I’ve learned a lot from the experiences of others and as a public school parent working in education.
What am I looking for in a school? What’s most important and what’s nice to have?
A lot of families seem to have an ingrained assumption that there are two or three acceptable schools for their kids to attend. You can probably imagine which schools I’m referencing. As someone who attended some of these sought-after schools as a student, I can understand this pull. It wasn’t until I worked at one of these selective schools that I started questioning whether it actually fit my definition of a “good” school. These schools are indisputably good at some things, like cherry-picking a student population that can meet elite admissions criteria and thrive in a traditionally rigorous classroom. If a school is only great for some kids, though, is it really a great school? When they have high ratings, selective schools can often lack the elements of a good school that are born out of a necessity for improvement: professional learning, feedback, and growth opportunities for teachers; high expectations for all manners of learners and the adaptive instruction to reach them; and a school community that values its most disenfranchised families.
What’s behind the desire to prioritize selective schools? Of course we all want the best education possible for our children. But are we placing utmost importance on academic reputation at any cost? Do we believe our kids won’t thrive elsewhere? Are we devaluing other aspects of schools that could serve our children well in life, like social emotional supports or diversity? Or are we really just uncomfortable with our children learning alongside a majority student population who doesn’t look like them racially? Maybe so! But we should be honest with ourselves about what it is about a school that earns it the #1 spot on our list. In interrogating that, we may find our choices shift.
As I approach the NCAP for a third time, I’m clearer on the non-negotiables I have for my children’s schooling. Academic factors are just one piece—criteria like “walking distance from home” have shot to the top of my list after realizing what a major boost in our daily quality of life that has been. I’m embarrassed to admit the degree to which my daughter’s school’s “no homework” policy factored into its #1 spot on our first NCAP submission. We’re lucky to have several language immersion schools in New Orleans, and if you’re like me, you consider bilingualism to be just as important as an understanding of math or science or history, and will rank schools accordingly on your list. There is so much more to a school than what can be found on paper, and sometimes an open house or school tour (which you should always request!) can convey a vibe that sends a school higher on your priority list. But it’s also oddly relieving to relinquish some of the choice to pragmatic calculus and let your school list fall where it may based on a set of objective criteria. I find it helpful to create a spreadsheet where I can score specific schools against my custom criteria.
What evidence is available about the effectiveness of schools and how do I interpret it?
Each year, the Louisiana Department of Education releases school evaluations in the form of “report cards” where schools receive a grade based on a variety of factors, but weighted heavily in this formula are state test scores. A school’s grade can be found under the “performance” tab of its page in the “Explore Our Schools” section of the NCAP website (enrollnolaps.com). More than anything, this score is a function of how many students living in poverty a school serves. The correlation between this statistic and state assessment performance is evident in the research, but can be stark when you see it firsthand. My youngest attends a school that can be described as nothing short of magical. Every day at drop off, she is welcomed effusively by everyone from the cafeteria staff to the principal to teachers she doesn’t even know. She has almost two hours of outside play on a campus so bucolic it rivals the set of Teletubbies and I get regular communications from her teachers about successes and concerns big and small, social and academic. She loves her school so much that she gets excited upon waking to go every day. By any reasonable measure, her school is a great school. It’s also a “D” school, according to the state of Louisiana. When you see these scores, it’s important to follow the link to the further detail—the “Student Progress” score behind the overall score may be more telling of a school’s quality since it measures student growth toward mastery of standards (my daughter’s school gets an A in that category).
How do I increase the likelihood of admission to my top choice schools?
Aside from following application instructions to a T, you may not be able to. But there may be some schools at which you have an admissions advantage, based on priorities identified by certain schools that give applicants an edge for things like:
- Having a sibling at the school
- Living near the school
- Having an individualized education program (IEP) in place
- Being designated as economically disadvantaged
- Currently attending a school that feeds into the school for which you’re applying
There are also a few other priorities that apply to specific individual schools, for instance Hynes-UNO Charter School gives priority to children of UNO faculty and staff. Keep in mind that priority status is reviewed only after any other admissions criteria is met, including additional requirements at selective schools where the applicant will have to take an academic proficiency test to be considered for entry. It can be unlikely to be matched with a highly selective school if you don’t meet any of the priority criteria for that school, but that doesn’t need to stop you from putting it #1 on your list if you meet the baseline criteria.
You’ll hear people talk about “cracking the code” of NCAP choice list strategy based on your likelihood of being matched with a school that’s in high demand. I try not to worry about gaming the system so much as making sure my school list truly reflects my personal hierarchy. But the designated priorities could inspire you to look more closely at certain schools or expedite that evaluation you’re thinking about seeking that could lead to an IEP.
Is my application complete?
Getting an application in early has no bearing on the results, so it’s wiser to use the time to confirm your school list and eligibility, triple-check your application and required documentation, and meet with NOLAPS staff as needed. I know more people than not who had gaps in their application last year and it landed them on waitlists for their top choices (I was almost in the same boat, but I happened to be notified that I was missing required information—you should not rely on getting this kind of heads up). If you think it’s unnecessary to provide your husband’s self-employment income for the previous two years when applying for a free school, well, that’s because it is. But that makes it no less of a barrier when it bites you in the ass if you haven’t provided it with your application. This year I’ll be taking up NOLA Public Schools on their offer to go over the application with a Student Enrollment Coordinator. The district operates three family resource centers where you can do this virtually or in person (enrollnolaps.com/connect).
What do I do if my child doesn’t get into one of our top school picks?
Last year 83% of K-12 applicants were matched—by a computer—with one of their top three choices, but it’s not unheard of for students to go unmatched altogether. You can list up to 12 schools in order of preference on your application, so it behooves you to list all schools in which you may be interested; there’s no advantage to listing a limited number of schools. If, after the main round of the NCAP (results for which are usually announced in April), your child is unmatched or matched unfavorably, you can try again during open enrollment which usually begins in early June. During this window, you can reapply for schools that have open seats after the registration dust settles (this is of course very rare for the most desired schools). It’s also possible that your child gets waitlisted at a school of your choice in the main round. In this case, you can accept a spot at a different school and, if you get an offer of admission off the waitlist, still accept it. Just beware that these offers are often extremely time sensitive—like, you’ll have 48 hours to respond before they offer it to the next student on the list—so you’ll want to make sure you get email notifications from NCAP and check for them frequently!
If you came here looking for a decisive strategy that would cure the impending doom you’re feeling approaching the NCAP, apologies that that may be a fairy tale. If you take one thing away from this, let it be the value of leveraging the resources available at a family resource center to ensure you submit the application on time and without errors. If you take away two things, perhaps the second will be a renewed openness to explore schools you didn’t previously consider. Looking beyond the surface level sheen of high rankings and popularity could help you uncover a school that’s a much better fit for your family.
New Orleans metro area parents! Want to share your experience with ANTIGRAVITY readers? We’re always looking for a wide variety of parenting voices and circumstances to explore each month. If you’re interested, please get in touch with Erin Hall or head to our About page to fill out a contributor form.
illustrations by Victoria Allen
