26-27 Lottery data up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also at a DCI feeder with a DCI offer (thankfully) and families that didn’t get in are talking about moving. Precarious situation to be in and I feel terribly for those kids who are facing both that disappointment and a major transition.

Yeah I really don't like this. This is supposed to be a feeder track that appears to run parallel to DCPS as an alternative. The system should be organized so that all the feeder elementary schools can send their kids to the middle school.

Who is running this system?

They're not feeder schools (which would imply a guarantee)

They're member schools.
https://www.myschooldc.org/faq/key-terms#pcs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also at a DCI feeder with a DCI offer (thankfully) and families that didn’t get in are talking about moving. Precarious situation to be in and I feel terribly for those kids who are facing both that disappointment and a major transition.

Yeah I really don't like this. This is supposed to be a feeder track that appears to run parallel to DCPS as an alternative. The system should be organized so that all the feeder elementary schools can send their kids to the middle school.

Who is running this system?

They're not feeder schools (which would imply a guarantee)

They're member schools.
https://www.myschooldc.org/faq/key-terms#pcs

You couldn’t run a 6-12 immersion school on a feeder system, they just don’t have the capacity to expand in years where attrition isn’t as large as planned.

I’m not even sure DCI has the organizational capacity to expand (and they certainly don’t have the physical space). IB for all is already a bit of a mess and getting bigger doesn’t make it easier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Huh. This doesn’t line up with my results in a weird way.

My K matched at John Lewis (our #5 choice). Her brother was waitlisted there with waitlist #1 for 1st grade (and he matched with our #6 choice). Both kids’ lists were exactly the same.

I assumed this was because Lewis either didn’t offer any seats for 1st grade or offered one or two and they got taken by siblings. Fine.

But looking at this dashboard, Lewis took FIVE kids for 1st grade, four of whom were no preference. How on earth did four kids with no preference match when my kid, whose results clearly show a preference of “Sibling Offered” wasn’t offered a seat?

I was under them impression that this could only happen if my kid had matched to a school he ranked higher (then he’d be #1 on the waitlist where his sister matched). But that’s not the case - he matched with our #6 school.

Anyone have any idea how this could have happened? This is messing with my whole understanding of how the lottery works.

This doesn’t align with my understanding of the lottery either.

Poster above said it most simply...think of sibling offered as a priority that is only applied after match day. Sibling attending, IB at time of application, etc. all apply before the match.

If this were true, most Latin twins sets would have one kid getting matched and the other kid having a single digit waitlist number. But it was my understanding that in most case with Latin, if one twin is matched, they both were. Any Latin twin families (or people who know twins) want to speak to that? Is that what your experience was (this year or previous years)? The chances of BOTH twins matching of their own accord and not getting in via sibling offered preference is very, very low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Huh. This doesn’t line up with my results in a weird way.

My K matched at John Lewis (our #5 choice). Her brother was waitlisted there with waitlist #1 for 1st grade (and he matched with our #6 choice). Both kids’ lists were exactly the same.

I assumed this was because Lewis either didn’t offer any seats for 1st grade or offered one or two and they got taken by siblings. Fine.

But looking at this dashboard, Lewis took FIVE kids for 1st grade, four of whom were no preference. How on earth did four kids with no preference match when my kid, whose results clearly show a preference of “Sibling Offered” wasn’t offered a seat?

I was under them impression that this could only happen if my kid had matched to a school he ranked higher (then he’d be #1 on the waitlist where his sister matched). But that’s not the case - he matched with our #6 school.

Anyone have any idea how this could have happened? This is messing with my whole understanding of how the lottery works.

This doesn’t align with my understanding of the lottery either.

Poster above said it most simply...think of sibling offered as a priority that is only applied after match day. Sibling attending, IB at time of application, etc. all apply before the match.

If this were true, most Latin twins sets would have one kid getting matched and the other kid having a single digit waitlist number. But it was my understanding that in most case with Latin, if one twin is matched, they both were. Any Latin twin families (or people who know twins) want to speak to that? Is that what your experience was (this year or previous years)? The chances of BOTH twins matching of their own accord and not getting in via sibling offered preference is very, very low.

I'm the person that's in this situation - just to add on that I called MSDC and spoke to a very nice woman who did not know the answer. The data team is going to call me back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also at a DCI feeder with a DCI offer (thankfully) and families that didn’t get in are talking about moving. Precarious situation to be in and I feel terribly for those kids who are facing both that disappointment and a major transition.

Yeah I really don't like this. This is supposed to be a feeder track that appears to run parallel to DCPS as an alternative. The system should be organized so that all the feeder elementary schools can send their kids to the middle school.

Who is running this system?

They're not feeder schools (which would imply a guarantee)

They're member schools.
https://www.myschooldc.org/faq/key-terms#pcs

You couldn’t run a 6-12 immersion school on a feeder system, they just don’t have the capacity to expand in years where attrition isn’t as large as planned.

I’m not even sure DCI has the organizational capacity to expand (and they certainly don’t have the physical space). IB for all is already a bit of a mess and getting bigger doesn’t make it easier.

DCI does own more buildings than they are currently using, the buildings need to be fully renovated before they can be used for class rooms. My understanding is that they do hope to renovate and expand eventually but that will not help fix the immediate space issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Huh. This doesn’t line up with my results in a weird way.

My K matched at John Lewis (our #5 choice). Her brother was waitlisted there with waitlist #1 for 1st grade (and he matched with our #6 choice). Both kids’ lists were exactly the same.

I assumed this was because Lewis either didn’t offer any seats for 1st grade or offered one or two and they got taken by siblings. Fine.

But looking at this dashboard, Lewis took FIVE kids for 1st grade, four of whom were no preference. How on earth did four kids with no preference match when my kid, whose results clearly show a preference of “Sibling Offered” wasn’t offered a seat?

I was under them impression that this could only happen if my kid had matched to a school he ranked higher (then he’d be #1 on the waitlist where his sister matched). But that’s not the case - he matched with our #6 school.

Anyone have any idea how this could have happened? This is messing with my whole understanding of how the lottery works.

This doesn’t align with my understanding of the lottery either.

Poster above said it most simply...think of sibling offered as a priority that is only applied after match day. Sibling attending, IB at time of application, etc. all apply before the match.

If this were true, most Latin twins sets would have one kid getting matched and the other kid having a single digit waitlist number. But it was my understanding that in most case with Latin, if one twin is matched, they both were. Any Latin twin families (or people who know twins) want to speak to that? Is that what your experience was (this year or previous years)? The chances of BOTH twins matching of their own accord and not getting in via sibling offered preference is very, very low.

I think this is because the problem would only occur if the first twin to match had a lottery number that was just barely good enough, and the other twin has a bad number that placed them at the end of the Sibling Offered category. So it's a rare scenario.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Huh. This doesn’t line up with my results in a weird way.

My K matched at John Lewis (our #5 choice). Her brother was waitlisted there with waitlist #1 for 1st grade (and he matched with our #6 choice). Both kids’ lists were exactly the same.

I assumed this was because Lewis either didn’t offer any seats for 1st grade or offered one or two and they got taken by siblings. Fine.

But looking at this dashboard, Lewis took FIVE kids for 1st grade, four of whom were no preference. How on earth did four kids with no preference match when my kid, whose results clearly show a preference of “Sibling Offered” wasn’t offered a seat?

I was under them impression that this could only happen if my kid had matched to a school he ranked higher (then he’d be #1 on the waitlist where his sister matched). But that’s not the case - he matched with our #6 school.

Anyone have any idea how this could have happened? This is messing with my whole understanding of how the lottery works.

I'm this PP, and I wanted to follow up with an update. I just got off the phone with the MySchoolDC folks. The short version of the story is that, while the algorithm is complicated and things are definitely happening quickly and at overlapping times, as a generally rule, "sibling offered" preference is applied from the top down. Essentially that means that the lottery is run not all at exactly the same time, but starting with 12th graders and working its way down to PK3. Generally, this works out pretty well, as older siblings pull in their younger siblings. But in my case, my K got a WAY better number than my 1st grader and was the one who matched, but too late to pull in the 1st grader.

That also means that with twins, they're much more likely to pull each other in via "Sibling Offered" because they're in the same grade and thus getting pulled into the algorithm at the same time.

Pretty interesting!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Huh. This doesn’t line up with my results in a weird way.

My K matched at John Lewis (our #5 choice). Her brother was waitlisted there with waitlist #1 for 1st grade (and he matched with our #6 choice). Both kids’ lists were exactly the same.

I assumed this was because Lewis either didn’t offer any seats for 1st grade or offered one or two and they got taken by siblings. Fine.

But looking at this dashboard, Lewis took FIVE kids for 1st grade, four of whom were no preference. How on earth did four kids with no preference match when my kid, whose results clearly show a preference of “Sibling Offered” wasn’t offered a seat?

I was under them impression that this could only happen if my kid had matched to a school he ranked higher (then he’d be #1 on the waitlist where his sister matched). But that’s not the case - he matched with our #6 school.

Anyone have any idea how this could have happened? This is messing with my whole understanding of how the lottery works.

I'm this PP, and I wanted to follow up with an update. I just got off the phone with the MySchoolDC folks. The short version of the story is that, while the algorithm is complicated and things are definitely happening quickly and at overlapping times, as a generally rule, "sibling offered" preference is applied from the top down. Essentially that means that the lottery is run not all at exactly the same time, but starting with 12th graders and working its way down to PK3. Generally, this works out pretty well, as older siblings pull in their younger siblings. But in my case, my K got a WAY better number than my 1st grader and was the one who matched, but too late to pull in the 1st grader.

That also means that with twins, they're much more likely to pull each other in via "Sibling Offered" because they're in the same grade and thus getting pulled into the algorithm at the same time.

Pretty interesting!

Thanks for the report!

[Anonymous]

Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Huh. This doesn’t line up with my results in a weird way.

My K matched at John Lewis (our #5 choice). Her brother was waitlisted there with waitlist #1 for 1st grade (and he matched with our #6 choice). Both kids’ lists were exactly the same.

I assumed this was because Lewis either didn’t offer any seats for 1st grade or offered one or two and they got taken by siblings. Fine.

But looking at this dashboard, Lewis took FIVE kids for 1st grade, four of whom were no preference. How on earth did four kids with no preference match when my kid, whose results clearly show a preference of “Sibling Offered” wasn’t offered a seat?

I was under them impression that this could only happen if my kid had matched to a school he ranked higher (then he’d be #1 on the waitlist where his sister matched). But that’s not the case - he matched with our #6 school.

Anyone have any idea how this could have happened? This is messing with my whole understanding of how the lottery works.

This doesn’t align with my understanding of the lottery either.

Poster above said it most simply...think of sibling offered as a priority that is only applied after match day. Sibling attending, IB at time of application, etc. all apply before the match.

If this were true, most Latin twins sets would have one kid getting matched and the other kid having a single digit waitlist number. But it was my understanding that in most case with Latin, if one twin is matched, they both were. Any Latin twin families (or people who know twins) want to speak to that? Is that what your experience was (this year or previous years)? The chances of BOTH twins matching of their own accord and not getting in via sibling offered preference is very, very low.

I think this is because the problem would only occur if the first twin to match had a lottery number that was just barely good enough, and the other twin has a bad number that placed them at the end of the Sibling Offered category. So it's a rare scenario.

Exactly this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So if i follow coreectly, at this point the acceptable charter middle/high schools are both Latins, Basis (sort of), DCI, Inspired (ms only), Truth (sort of, and hs is brand new). No one has locked in feeder rights now that DCI feeders are large.

So everyone's in the same boat, with DCI feeders having a leg up but no longer guaranteed.

What a mess.

Agreed. What happens to all of those kids when the leg up doesn’t work out? Maybe some have an acceptable IB middle school, but most of the families we know are IB for MacFarland or Brookland middle school. If they have a bad enough number to get waitlisted at DCI, is SH, EH, or any of the other “middle tier”schools an option?

I mean, despite the "middle tier" rhetoric, Stuart Hobson is harder to get into than BASIS recently, so no... the few kids not getting into DCI aren't getting a top 1/3rd lottery number as SH requires. EH maybe, but trending in the direction of harder to get into, so I wouldn't count on it. Jefferson seems to be the best bet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Huh. This doesn’t line up with my results in a weird way.

My K matched at John Lewis (our #5 choice). Her brother was waitlisted there with waitlist #1 for 1st grade (and he matched with our #6 choice). Both kids’ lists were exactly the same.

I assumed this was because Lewis either didn’t offer any seats for 1st grade or offered one or two and they got taken by siblings. Fine.

But looking at this dashboard, Lewis took FIVE kids for 1st grade, four of whom were no preference. How on earth did four kids with no preference match when my kid, whose results clearly show a preference of “Sibling Offered” wasn’t offered a seat?

I was under them impression that this could only happen if my kid had matched to a school he ranked higher (then he’d be #1 on the waitlist where his sister matched). But that’s not the case - he matched with our #6 school.

Anyone have any idea how this could have happened? This is messing with my whole understanding of how the lottery works.

I'm this PP, and I wanted to follow up with an update. I just got off the phone with the MySchoolDC folks. The short version of the story is that, while the algorithm is complicated and things are definitely happening quickly and at overlapping times, as a generally rule, "sibling offered" preference is applied from the top down. Essentially that means that the lottery is run not all at exactly the same time, but starting with 12th graders and working its way down to PK3. Generally, this works out pretty well, as older siblings pull in their younger siblings. But in my case, my K got a WAY better number than my 1st grader and was the one who matched, but too late to pull in the 1st grader.

That also means that with twins, they're much more likely to pull each other in via "Sibling Offered" because they're in the same grade and thus getting pulled into the algorithm at the same time.

Pretty interesting!

Thanks for the report!

Thanks for this info! This tracks with our experience unfortunately. We don’t have twins but have two kids one year apart and have twice had the experience of the younger one getting in somewhere and not pulling in the older one.