Exploring the Impact of the Optional Assignment Policy on School Enrollment and Equity in the State College Area School District

State College Area School District’s (SCASD) intradistrict optional assignment policy has allowed elementary families to request enrollment outside their zoned attendance area for more than 20 years. While the policy was designed to support family choice, the shifts in school demographics it may create raise equity questions the district had not previously examined. The mixed-methods study examined the impact of SCASD’s optional assignment policy on families, students, and elementary schools and was guided by three research questions: (1) What factors influence families’ decisions to pursue optional assignment? (2) How do the racial and socioeconomic demographics of students requesting optional assignment compare to those of the zone elementary schools? (3) And, how does the policy impact the demographics and academic outcomes of the elementary school buildings? The qualitative strand analyzed three years of open-ended parent responses from 201 optional assignment applications using thematic coding. The quantitative strand analyzed three years of building-level demographic, staffing, funding, and academic-achievement data using descriptive statistics, a chi-square goodness-of-fit test, a one-way ANOVA, and independent samples t-tests. Families cited eight recurring themes and the top three included child wellbeing, continuity of enrollment, and transportation. The racial and socioeconomic overall enrollment and differences was concentrated in specific buildings. Academic performance also varied significantly across the eight schools, with the highest concentrations of optionally assigned students of color enrolled in the district’s lowest-performing building. These findings suggest the optional assignment policy, although intended to be supportive for parents, may be contributing to inequitable patterns across SCASD’s elementary schools.