HB Admissions are rigged

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why I wish APS would release the actual percentage/number of 5th graders applying to HB from each ES. My guess has always been that a higher proportion of ATS 5th graders may apply (compared to the proportion of 5th graders from the neighborhood ES). The ATS kids draw from all over the County and then are scattered to their home zones for middle school. The ATS kids are starting their friendships over, regardless of whether they go to HB or the home middle school. In contrast, many neighborhood ES kids may want to just stick with their existing friends through middle school and therefore not as many apply to HB--- I have heard this from quite a few parents in our neighborhood. This is just a theory... not sure why APS is so secretive about the HB admission pool data.

I suspect a good part of not releasing it is knowing that people will misinterpret the data in order to attack the programs. It's easier to just not share it than to share it and then argue against its continued misuse.

I think you might be onto something as to why it may seem that a disproportionate number of ATS students end up at HB, that it's a self-selecting population, although I'm not sure it's about friendships (after all, roughly a third of their elementary class will go the same middle school). We didn't apply to ATS or any other choice school for our son because we really wanted to be in a neighborhood school and none of the elementary choice programs felt sufficiently compelling to us to overcome that. The neighborhood school thing becomes less of a priority for us as the kids get older, but assuming it's still something we value at that point, HB would again have to sufficiently compelling to overcome our neighborhood school preference. For someone who doesn't particularly prioritize going to a neighborhood school, they're going to be far more likely to apply to both ATS and HB, so it wouldn't surprise me if the HB lottery pool has a disproportionate number of ATS kids to begin with.

+1. The best predictor for a family entering a school lottery (for admission to a school other than the neighborhood school) is whether they have already done it before. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if more 5th graders at ATS enter the lottery than 5th graders at other elementary school. 100% of the ATS 5th graders are presumably open to choice schools. That's simply not the case at neighborhood elementary schools, where a large percentage of families would never even consider a choice school. And we can't usefully compare the ATS to HBW numbers with the Drew/Claremont/Key to HBW numbers - even if we had access to them - because there are Immersion and Montessori middle school programs, so we would expect significant numbers of kids at those schools to elect a choice school other than HBW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB is for the connected, and once you are in the HB ecosystem you realize how classist it is when the UMC whites in all AP classes don't associate with the very few minorities that are let in. The elitist ATS to HB route is steeped in conspiracy.

ATS to HB is such a joke. Those schools could not be more different, so if one is such a great fit for your child, the other probably isn't. For some people, though, all that matters is exclusivity.

I see people on this board say things like this a lot, and I'm sorry but it just betrays a lack of understanding of both schools, educational philosophies, and child development. The type of discipline that kids need in the early years is very different from what is needed later on in their educations. It's not a joke to decide that both schools have something positive to offer your child at different stages of his/her life.

Complain if you want that people shouldn't be able to win two different lotteries, but that's a different issue. Though, if you're going to be consistent in arguing that the schools are so different that an interest in both of them doesn't make sense, then you should probably also argue that you should be allowed to participate in only one of the lotteries. Whether your child gets in or not should be irrelevant, if your argument is only about the types of schools they are.

NP +1. I don't know about you, but I couldn't discern the best middle/high school fit for my child when he was four (and we applied to ATS). And regardless of school, I would expect him to need much more structure at five than at 13.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a double-blind lottery.
https://www.apsva.us/school-options/high-school-choices/how-to-apply/

Names are picked from one box and numbers are picked from another box.

That is not a double-blind lottery. It isn't possible to have a double-blind lottery when you're drawing names for spot in a program.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/double+blind

If you randomly pull applications out of a box and number them in the order you pull them, and then you randomly pull numbers out of a separate box, that is double blind. The order in which the applications were first pulled (which was random) has nothing to do with the order in which they are selected (which is also random).

No. It's just a lottery, which is inherently random. If there are X applications for Y spaces, each application has an X in Y chance of being chosen. You can't change that by how you draw the names. And there are no degrees of random. It either is or it isn't.

Well, there are two separate random events. It's hard to see how someone can game that.

I don't think many people think that the lottery is rigged. It's the non lottery admissions that raise eyebrows, and there should be more clarity there.

We have a neighbor whose child attends HB, but did not get in through the lottery. The neighbor "browbeat" (his word) the administration into admitting the kid. It happens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why I wish APS would release the actual percentage/number of 5th graders applying to HB from each ES. My guess has always been that a higher proportion of ATS 5th graders may apply (compared to the proportion of 5th graders from the neighborhood ES). The ATS kids draw from all over the County and then are scattered to their home zones for middle school. The ATS kids are starting their friendships over, regardless of whether they go to HB or the home middle school. In contrast, many neighborhood ES kids may want to just stick with their existing friends through middle school and therefore not as many apply to HB--- I have heard this from quite a few parents in our neighborhood. This is just a theory... not sure why APS is so secretive about the HB admission pool data.

Maybe they aren't secretive. The form and the lottery are based on your home ES. The transfer report shows how many kids transfer in from which middle school zone (so you can figure out from which group of ES). It's not being "secret" -- they are reporting the information they easily have. What you are really asking is "why doesn't APS run a custom report to satisfy curious gossips?" I can answer that--they have better things to do with their time (and our tax dollars).

PP- you missed the point of my post and are being unnecessarily snarky. The transfer report shows how many kids transfer in from which middle school zone-- but it doesn't show which elementary school they attended before coming to HB. It also doesn't show how many kids apply from each ES (or from private school for that matter). This is information APS should easily have- X%/# of 5th graders from Taylor who apply; X%/# from Long Branch; X%/# from ATS, etc. If more ATS kids proportionally apply to the HB lottery, then it makes sense why it seems like a disproportionate amount are accepted (or maybe that's not even true). The data would also show (or not show) whether there are admissions irregularities that could be chalked up to connections/favoritism people often claim. Without this data, its hard to have a conversation about whether the lottery should change, which was a point of discussion when the APS transfer policy was being revised last year.

I remember seeing this kind of data years ago ie the number of applicants for each ES zone. From memory, there were high numbers of applications from HB's neighboring schools like Taylor and Jamestown, making these students' odds of winning a spot in the lottery very low. More distant ES schools had way fewer applications, improving those students' odds considerably. When my kid went to HB, you could see from the student address book that most of the families with more than one kid at HB came from the ES zones with better odds, as you'd expect from statistics.

[Anonymous]

Did the SB decide to allot spaces to secondary choice programs by ES rather than by neighborhood?

I got distracted by NVD's public breakdown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did the SB decide to allot spaces to secondary choice programs by ES rather than by neighborhood?

I got distracted by NVD's public breakdown.

I don't know about other schools and programs, but H-B assigns a certain number of slots per elementary school, based on the population of each school. As a result, the number assigned to each school can change from year to year. Kids at ATS and other choice programs are lumped in with the application pool from whichever elementary school they are zoned for. There are no slots assigned to ATS. Therefore, kids from ATS who go to H-B are typically from all around Arlington. Their odds are the same as everyone else who applies from their "sending" elementary. As PP noted, any child's odds are better if their sending school is one where fewer people apply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did the SB decide to allot spaces to secondary choice programs by ES rather than by neighborhood?

I got distracted by NVD's public breakdown.

I don't know about other schools and programs, but H-B assigns a certain number of slots per elementary school, based on the population of each school. As a result, the number assigned to each school can change from year to year. Kids at ATS and other choice programs are lumped in with the application pool from whichever elementary school they are zoned for. There are no slots assigned to ATS. Therefore, kids from ATS who go to H-B are typically from all around Arlington. Their odds are the same as everyone else who applies from their "sending" elementary. As PP noted, any child's odds are better if their sending school is one where fewer people apply.

I think PP is asking about the proposal that came up this spring to change that process. As part of the transfer policy revision this spring, APS had proposed to dedicate a certain number of spots to HB per elementary school, so the ATS/Claremont/ASF kids would no longer be lumped in with their neighborhood ES. There was also a proposal to allow siblings to be automatically admitted to HB. Neither or these changes made it into the final transfer policy that was adopted by the School Board.