Who do I write to to advocate that Yu Ying join the common lottery?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying had 5 spaces for Prek3 and 9 spaces for PreK4 this year for the lottery.

They had no spaces in grades K, 1st, and 2nd so it was only the waitlist for people who applied to these grades.

Not sure if being in the common lottery will make any difference for future yrs other than getting rid of the waitlist by timestamp which will become completely random like other HRCS.

Wow, last year there were 35 spaces that went to lottery for PreK4. 35 to 9 is a big change, and I guess it's been going in that direction every year (wasn't it only SY11-12 when they still went through their whole waitlist?).

[Anonymous]

The current lottery is random, folks. It is only the wait list that is ordered by time stamp. And so few folks are getting in through the lottery or the wait list it does not make much difference. YY was considering common lottery his year but couldn't because it did not know if it would be able to do Pk3. I think it is likely they will join the common lottery next year since that is known. They have so few spots and I don't think it is to their advantage to have people camping our outside the gate. As PP points out things have changed drmaticallu since moving to the permanent site and announcing DCI. Huge numbers of sibs after the bubble class in which everyone got in (rising 2nd).

BTW I just picked up my kids at YY summer session and saw a couple of kids being picked up by their grandparent speaking to them in Mandarin. One of them is in my child's class so I know these kids.

[Anonymous]

There are a dozen kids at YY who learn to understand some Mandarin, or another dialect, at home. They're not bilingual, or native speakers, because they seldom answer in Chinese outside class. The names of bilingual kids rarely go in the lottery hat, both because the lack of ethnic leadership doesn't work for their immigrant parents and because the lottery, which welcomes individual families rather than an ethnic community, runs contrary to Chinese cultural norms. I recognize that this background will be of no interest to most YY parents.

As somebody already pointed out, the research supports that two-way immersion is far and away the best method for kids to learn a second or third language. It follows that the one lottery for all should be scraped. It won't be for at least 20 years, but it should be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, sorry that that these wankers have mangled your innocuous thread.

PS. Hope you've learned to avoid advocating a thing where YY is concerned.

Meh, OPs original assumption that the common lottery ranking takes care of YY's concern about getting parents serious about Chinese isn't really true. Common lottery computer only looks at your random assigned lottery number for the most part, not how you ranked the school until it gets to you. Parents who would rank YY #1 but got a random lottery number of 480 would NOT get in ahead of someone who ranked YY #7 but had a 200 random number, unless 200 got to one of their higher ranked choices, which might or might not happen.

We plan to apply next year and we hope they keep a separate lottery.

First of all, you're discounting the fact that not everyone who gets into YY through the separate lottery would choose YY as a first choice. Remember, the line standing is only for the waiting list, so someone could apply online the day before the lottery closed and have just as much chance of getting in as the people who stood out in the cold for 8 hours.

Second of all, I think you are misunderstanding how the lottery works. My understanding is that it looks at people's #1 choices first, and matches as many of those people as possible. In subsequent rounds, the "accepted" kids will only be displaced by students with sibling preference (and in-bounds preference for DCPS) or by people with better numbers. So for any school with few seats, the ones who match are going to be siblings and those who ranked the school highly AND had an excellent number. Someone who had a truly excellent number is not going to match with their number 7 school unless they chose 6 schools with no seats available.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are a dozen kids at YY who learn to understand some Mandarin, or another dialect, at home. They're not bilingual, or native speakers, because they seldom answer in Chinese outside class. The names of bilingual kids rarely go in the lottery hat, both because the lack of ethnic leadership doesn't work for their immigrant parents and because the lottery, which welcomes individual families rather than an ethnic community, runs contrary to Chinese cultural norms. I recognize that this background will be of no interest to most YY parents.

As somebody already pointed out, the research supports that two-way immersion is far and away the best method for kids to learn a second or third language. It follows that the one lottery for all should be scraped. It won't be for at least 20 years, but it should be.

Well, if these immigrant parents are anything like my immigrant parents and myself from another Asian country - they are not particularly interested in sending their Mandarin speaking kid who speaks little to no English to an immersion language school. The goal for most immigrants who want their kids to excel at school is to focus on acquiring English as fast as possible: You can't get into Harvard or do well on the SATs without knowing English.

At best, schools like YY can hope to attract ABCs who as PP state are not bilingual but whose dominant and native language is English... and there is little point in recruiting English dominant kids.

[Anonymous]

Different poster, but PP your understanding of the common lottery is wrong. It would be so much better if it worked through #1 picks first; but it doesn't. It takes the person with random lottery #0001 or however many there were, and taking preference groups into consideration (siblings and IB where applicable) it works through all of that #0001 person's list to match them, and then moves onto #0002. Person #9999 pretty much has zero chance in Hades getting matched anywhere on their list of 12 unless they apply to a school that never has a waiting list. If it went through #1 rankings first, that would be much fairer, but person #0050 who ranks Yu Ying 11th has a better chance of getting in than person #0600 who ranks Yu Ying #1.

If they figure out how to have the algorithm consider the parent's ranking of schools as well as random lottery number and preference, that would be a great improvement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are a dozen kids at YY who learn to understand some Mandarin, or another dialect, at home. They're not bilingual, or native speakers, because they seldom answer in Chinese outside class. The names of bilingual kids rarely go in the lottery hat, both because the lack of ethnic leadership doesn't work for their immigrant parents and because the lottery, which welcomes individual families rather than an ethnic community, runs contrary to Chinese cultural norms. I recognize that this background will be of no interest to most YY parents.

As somebody already pointed out, the research supports that two-way immersion is far and away the best method for kids to learn a second or third language. It follows that the one lottery for all should be scraped. It won't be for at least 20 years, but it should be.

I do appreciate the background that you have provided, very much. However, it only reinforces the challenges that any Mandarin school in DC would face. Getting rid of the lottery is not an option; therefore it doesn't matter if that would make it more culturally acceptable for Chinese families.

Many years ago I spent a year teaching English to adults in Taiwan. There were some students who were so highly motivated that they blew through all of their work and pestered me for more. They took advantage of every opportunity to practice and ask questions, and some students did quite well despite the fact that a) I was not in any way a trained teacher and b) the learning was strictly one way.

Now, would those students have done better if they'd had two years of full English immersion at ages 3 and 4 and then gone on to study English for 13 more years? What do you think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, sorry that that these wankers have mangled your innocuous thread.

PS. Hope you've learned to avoid advocating a thing where YY is concerned.

Meh, OPs original assumption that the common lottery ranking takes care of YY's concern about getting parents serious about Chinese isn't really true. Common lottery computer only looks at your random assigned lottery number for the most part, not how you ranked the school until it gets to you. Parents who would rank YY #1 but got a random lottery number of 480 would NOT get in ahead of someone who ranked YY #7 but had a 200 random number, unless 200 got to one of their higher ranked choices, which might or might not happen.

We plan to apply next year and we hope they keep a separate lottery.

First of all, you're discounting the fact that not everyone who gets into YY through the separate lottery would choose YY as a first choice. Remember, the line standing is only for the waiting list, so someone could apply online the day before the lottery closed and have just as much chance of getting in as the people who stood out in the cold for 8 hours.

Second of all, I think you are misunderstanding how the lottery works. My understanding is that it looks at people's #1 choices first, and matches as many of those people as possible. In subsequent rounds, the "accepted" kids will only be displaced by students with sibling preference (and in-bounds preference for DCPS) or by people with better numbers. So for any school with few seats, the ones who match are going to be siblings and those who ranked the school highly AND had an excellent number. Someone who had a truly excellent number is not going to match with their number 7 school unless they chose 6 schools with no seats available.

Different poster, but PP your understanding of the common lottery is wrong. It would be so much better if it worked through #1 picks first; but it doesn't. It takes the person with random lottery #0001 or however many there were, and taking preference groups into consideration (siblings and IB where applicable) it works through all of that #0001 person's list to match them, and then moves onto #0002. Person #9999 pretty much has zero chance in Hades getting matched anywhere on their list of 12 unless they apply to a school that never has a waiting list. If it went through #1 rankings first, that would be much fairer, but person #0050 who ranks Yu Ying 11th has a better chance of getting in than person #0600 who ranks Yu Ying #1.

You are right that the best numbers will be matched with their higher choices. What you are missing is that the people with really good (not "great") numbers will be the ones to get the waitlist numbers that fill up the few spots that get vacated by people higher up turning them down. There is still no way someone who ranks YY #1 stands a chance if their overall random number is less than great.

The other option that would make the current lottery much better is if it did an individual lottery for each school (all within the one algorithm). So for the 12 schools any given person applied to, they would get a separate random lottery number for each lottery. They would have 12 chances to get a decent number, and the computer would sort by preference groups, random lottery numbers, and parent ranking, and match according to all 3.

If they figure out how to have the algorithm consider the parent's ranking of schools as well as random lottery number and preference, that would be a great improvement. But right now, it's all about your random lottery number and preference group, and your own ranking order of schools doesn't help you much with a less than very good lottery number. Only 1 shot for all 12 schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Different poster, but PP your understanding of the common lottery is wrong. It would be so much better if it worked through #1 picks first; but it doesn't. It takes the person with random lottery #0001 or however many there were, and taking preference groups into consideration (siblings and IB where applicable) it works through all of that #0001 person's list to match them, and then moves onto #0002. Person #9999 pretty much has zero chance in Hades getting matched anywhere on their list of 12 unless they apply to a school that never has a waiting list. If it went through #1 rankings first, that would be much fairer, but person #0050 who ranks Yu Ying 11th has a better chance of getting in than person #0600 who ranks Yu Ying #1.

If they figure out how to have the algorithm consider the parent's ranking of schools as well as random lottery number and preference, that would be a great improvement.

I actually don't think that your understanding of the lottery is correct. But even in your scenario, person with a number of 50 is not getting into their 11th choice. They are getting into their 1, 2 or 3 choice. And YY would be ranked as #1 by many, many people, so it would still be a combination of great number/high ranking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are a dozen kids at YY who learn to understand some Mandarin, or another dialect, at home. They're not bilingual, or native speakers, because they seldom answer in Chinese outside class. The names of bilingual kids rarely go in the lottery hat, both because the lack of ethnic leadership doesn't work for their immigrant parents and because the lottery, which welcomes individual families rather than an ethnic community, runs contrary to Chinese cultural norms. I recognize that this background will be of no interest to most YY parents.

As somebody already pointed out, the research supports that two-way immersion is far and away the best method for kids to learn a second or third language. It follows that the one lottery for all should be scraped. It won't be for at least 20 years, but it should be.

I don't expect you to answer PP, because you've already shown that you won't or you can't. But does anyone else have theories about why this person is this wound up about something that Yu Ying couldn't change even if it was their biggest priority (admissions preference for ethnic, native-speaking Chinese students)? What situation or personality that sounds fairly intelligent chooses to ignore this reality and yet twist and twist and twist over this issue without letting up?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Different poster, but PP your understanding of the common lottery is wrong. It would be so much better if it worked through #1 picks first; but it doesn't. It takes the person with random lottery #0001 or however many there were, and taking preference groups into consideration (siblings and IB where applicable) it works through all of that #0001 person's list to match them, and then moves onto #0002. Person #9999 pretty much has zero chance in Hades getting matched anywhere on their list of 12 unless they apply to a school that never has a waiting list. If it went through #1 rankings first, that would be much fairer, but person #0050 who ranks Yu Ying 11th has a better chance of getting in than person #0600 who ranks Yu Ying #1.

If they figure out how to have the algorithm consider the parent's ranking of schools as well as random lottery number and preference, that would be a great improvement.

I actually don't think that your understanding of the lottery is correct. But even in your scenario, person with a number of 50 is not getting into their 11th choice. They are getting into their 1, 2 or 3 choice. And YY would be ranked as #1 by many, many people, so it would still be a combination of great number/high ranking.

You're mistaken, but you are welcome to point to where my version is incorrect. There are multiple threads here about the algorithm.

Just to make it clear, the problem is that if Person #0050 ranks YY #7, and Person #0051 ranks it #1, #0050 is still getting in and will only give up that spot if they get into their #6 choice later. But I don't think I can explain my point any better than that, so if you still feel that it's incorrect, so be it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Different poster, but PP your understanding of the common lottery is wrong. It would be so much better if it worked through #1 picks first; but it doesn't. It takes the person with random lottery #0001 or however many there were, and taking preference groups into consideration (siblings and IB where applicable) it works through all of that #0001 person's list to match them, and then moves onto #0002. Person #9999 pretty much has zero chance in Hades getting matched anywhere on their list of 12 unless they apply to a school that never has a waiting list. If it went through #1 rankings first, that would be much fairer, but person #0050 who ranks Yu Ying 11th has a better chance of getting in than person #0600 who ranks Yu Ying #1.

If they figure out how to have the algorithm consider the parent's ranking of schools as well as random lottery number and preference, that would be a great improvement.

I actually don't think that your understanding of the lottery is correct. But even in your scenario, person with a number of 50 is not getting into their 11th choice. They are getting into their 1, 2 or 3 choice. And YY would be ranked as #1 by many, many people, so it would still be a combination of great number/high ranking.

NP here. PP is absolutely correct in her description of how the lottery works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Different poster, but PP your understanding of the common lottery is wrong. It would be so much better if it worked through #1 picks first; but it doesn't. It takes the person with random lottery #0001 or however many there were, and taking preference groups into consideration (siblings and IB where applicable) it works through all of that #0001 person's list to match them, and then moves onto #0002. Person #9999 pretty much has zero chance in Hades getting matched anywhere on their list of 12 unless they apply to a school that never has a waiting list. If it went through #1 rankings first, that would be much fairer, but person #0050 who ranks Yu Ying 11th has a better chance of getting in than person #0600 who ranks Yu Ying #1.

If they figure out how to have the algorithm consider the parent's ranking of schools as well as random lottery number and preference, that would be a great improvement.

I actually don't think that your understanding of the lottery is correct. But even in your scenario, person with a number of 50 is not getting into their 11th choice. They are getting into their 1, 2 or 3 choice. And YY would be ranked as #1 by many, many people, so it would still be a combination of great number/high ranking.

NP here. PP is absolutely correct in her description of how the lottery works.

The PP who said it worked through by rounds, or the one who said it works through individuals?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a dozen kids at YY who learn to understand some Mandarin, or another dialect, at home. They're not bilingual, or native speakers, because they seldom answer in Chinese outside class. The names of bilingual kids rarely go in the lottery hat, both because the lack of ethnic leadership doesn't work for their immigrant parents and because the lottery, which welcomes individual families rather than an ethnic community, runs contrary to Chinese cultural norms. I recognize that this background will be of no interest to most YY parents.

As somebody already pointed out, the research supports that two-way immersion is far and away the best method for kids to learn a second or third language. It follows that the one lottery for all should be scraped. It won't be for at least 20 years, but it should be.

I don't expect you to answer PP, because you've already shown that you won't or you can't. But does anyone else have theories about why this person is this wound up about something that Yu Ying couldn't change even if it was their biggest priority (admissions preference for ethnic, native-speaking Chinese students)? What situation or personality that sounds fairly intelligent chooses to ignore this reality and yet twist and twist and twist over this issue without letting up?

Err, you're the one who isn't letting up. Christ, let others argue what they want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I do appreciate the background that you have provided, very much. However, it only reinforces the challenges that any Mandarin school in DC would face. Getting rid of the lottery is not an option; therefore it doesn't matter if that would make it more culturally acceptable for Chinese families.

Many years ago I spent a year teaching English to adults in Taiwan. There were some students who were so highly motivated that they blew through all of their work and pestered me for more. They took advantage of every opportunity to practice and ask questions, and some students did quite well despite the fact that a) I was not in any way a trained teacher and b) the learning was strictly one way.

Now, would those students have done better if they'd had two years of full English immersion at ages 3 and 4 and then gone on to study English for 13 more years? What do you think?

Yes, they'd have done better. English pronunciation is tough for Chinese adults who didn't learn the language as kids. We often struggle to understand our Chinese au pairs, and they're barely out of their teens.