Parents of 2-year-old in DC - what should we be doing NOW to prepare for the PK3 lottery?

[Anonymous]

I think the biggest issue is that there are only a handful of schools that people are genuinely happy to send their children. Lots of people want to send their kids to an immersion school, yet there aren't that many options or seats. It's sort of tough for me to understand why with the money we are spending schools for the most part in DC aren't great. And yes, I absolutely think good parenting will allow a child to thrive in any school, but not every child has the kind of parents who read to them, help them with homework, etc.

I got a TERRIBLE lottery draw - an Appletree in Ward 7, my 12th choice was the only spot my son landed. In actual fact I only know one or two families who landed one of their top five choices. IT's just hard here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the biggest issue is that there are only a handful of schools that people are genuinely happy to send their children. Lots of people want to send their kids to an immersion school, yet there aren't that many options or seats. It's sort of tough for me to understand why with the money we are spending schools for the most part in DC aren't great. And yes, I absolutely think good parenting will allow a child to thrive in any school, but not every child has the kind of parents who read to them, help them with homework, etc.

I got a TERRIBLE lottery draw - an Appletree in Ward 7, my 12th choice was the only spot my son landed. In actual fact I only know one or two families who landed one of their top five choices. IT's just hard here.

This chart kinda illustrates what you are saying. Families in Wards 1-6 had much lower match rates than those in 7 and 8.

https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-match-rate-by-ward-of-residence.pdf

The overall match rate also declined this past year - from 72 to 70%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the biggest issue is that there are only a handful of schools that people are genuinely happy to send their children. Lots of people want to send their kids to an immersion school, yet there aren't that many options or seats. It's sort of tough for me to understand why with the money we are spending schools for the most part in DC aren't great. And yes, I absolutely think good parenting will allow a child to thrive in any school, but not every child has the kind of parents who read to them, help them with homework, etc.

I got a TERRIBLE lottery draw - an Appletree in Ward 7, my 12th choice was the only spot my son landed. In actual fact I only know one or two families who landed one of their top five choices. IT's just hard here.

This chart kinda illustrates what you are saying. Families in Wards 1-6 had much lower match rates than those in 7 and 8.

https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-match-rate-by-ward-of-residence.pdf

The overall match rate also declined this past year - from 72 to 70%.

One more https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-unique-applicants-on-wls-by-grade.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should read this:

https://www.washingtonian.com/2014/03/24/how-not-to-get-your-kid-into-kindergarten/

Dated information.

Not that dated. Although I wish she would do a follow up.

I agree it is not dated at all. The core of the article is about the hoops parents jump through for a situation that is largely beyond their control. The single driving factor is the lottery number. A high lottery number means that you'll get one of your top picks, and a low number means you'll get one of your low picks. The strategy of it is really all at the low end: trying to identify a few schools you could live with for a year, which hopefully no-one else has identified, and maybe get luckier next season. Nothing about that has fundamentally changed.

It is the calculus that makes me question the value of the common lottery. Yes, I know it was designed by a prize-winning mathematician and I readily concede he is smarter than I am. I simply submit that the model was originally about getting med students into their desired internships, and by and large med students are highly mobile (for the most part they don't have children and mortgages). In the case of the DC school lottery, we're talking about data points that are much more fixed (even if the school 4 miles away is available, that doesn't necessarily make it feasible for any given family to attend). At least with the old system, if you really wanted Spanish Immersion, and you bombed out in the LAMB lottery, you had another shot with the Stokes lottery; with the DC Bi lottery, with the MV lottery, with DCPS ranking Oyster, Cleveland, Tyler, etc. Now if you get a great number you run the table and if you get a bad number you're left with the dregs.

Med students have strongly different geographical preferences, different specialty preferences, and can easily move. This is not representative of EOTP families competing for the exact same spots.

This is true and I think the old system, while messy, distributed the odds more fairly because everyone had multiple shots.

This is not true. The odds are not distributed more with multiple lotteries. A person with a lucky lottery number can only pick one school, then the other options they had trickle down. There's still the same amount of spots and offered to same amount of people. I can understand how it feels otherwise if you've been dealt a bad lottery number, but don't let your personal experience ignore statistics.

Then can you use some probability theory and statistics to explain it to the rest of us? Because I recall knowing people who did terribly in one school's lottery, but very well in another's. Let's call the first one school A and the second school B. Granted they preferred school A to school B, but they still vastly preferred school B to schools C & D & E - not to mention their local neighborhood school. So, even though they preferred A, they still got lucky with B. Now, under the new system, the low number they got lands them at the bottom of the pile and they only get into school N or O or P. How far down do parents have to fall because of one bad draw?

The lottery concept works when everyone isn't competing for the exact same schools. But the reality is that they are. It's not a matter of "I want something in Ward 7 or Ward 8, but I'll take Two Rivers or Oyster as a last choice" vs. "I'd really rather have Yu Ying or LAMB, but otherwise I want Payne or Miner." No. Thousands of people want a few dozen seats. At least multiple lotteries gave them multiple chances at multiple schools. Sorry you didn't get Mundo Verde, but at least you got Cap City! Now if you blow up once, that's it: better luck next year.

You don't get it. It's ok. It's not about "my friend got more lucky a few years ago" blah blah blah.

No need to be so snide, it was a genuine question. I am not a mathematician, which is why I specifically asked for you to explain it. Which I notice you did not do. Maybe "trust me, I'm smarter than you are, so this is better" works for you, but it doesn't satisfy everybody.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:there are only so many spots. whether under the current lottery system or the previous one, not everyone is going to get their top choice. there will be lucky and unlucky people in both systems. the difference here is that the system knows what your top choice is, and if you're lucky with your overall draw, you will get it.

in the old system, it was possible for you to get into your #7 choice, and someone else get into their #7 choice, but if you'd been able to trade, you each would have had a spot at your #1 choice. That doesn't happen anymore. Under the old system, lucky people got into multiple schools and THEN decided which one they preferred. Under the new system, you prioritize in advance, which is much more efficient and means fewer slots open up over the summer.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should read this:

https://www.washingtonian.com/2014/03/24/how-not-to-get-your-kid-into-kindergarten/

Dated information.

Not that dated. Although I wish she would do a follow up.

I agree it is not dated at all. The core of the article is about the hoops parents jump through for a situation that is largely beyond their control. The single driving factor is the lottery number. A high lottery number means that you'll get one of your top picks, and a low number means you'll get one of your low picks. The strategy of it is really all at the low end: trying to identify a few schools you could live with for a year, which hopefully no-one else has identified, and maybe get luckier next season. Nothing about that has fundamentally changed.

It is the calculus that makes me question the value of the common lottery. Yes, I know it was designed by a prize-winning mathematician and I readily concede he is smarter than I am. I simply submit that the model was originally about getting med students into their desired internships, and by and large med students are highly mobile (for the most part they don't have children and mortgages). In the case of the DC school lottery, we're talking about data points that are much more fixed (even if the school 4 miles away is available, that doesn't necessarily make it feasible for any given family to attend). At least with the old system, if you really wanted Spanish Immersion, and you bombed out in the LAMB lottery, you had another shot with the Stokes lottery; with the DC Bi lottery, with the MV lottery, with DCPS ranking Oyster, Cleveland, Tyler, etc. Now if you get a great number you run the table and if you get a bad number you're left with the dregs.

Med students have strongly different geographical preferences, different specialty preferences, and can easily move. This is not representative of EOTP families competing for the exact same spots.

This is true and I think the old system, while messy, distributed the odds more fairly because everyone had multiple shots.

This is not true. The odds are not distributed more with multiple lotteries. A person with a lucky lottery number can only pick one school, then the other options they had trickle down. There's still the same amount of spots and offered to same amount of people. I can understand how it feels otherwise if you've been dealt a bad lottery number, but don't let your personal experience ignore statistics.

Then can you use some probability theory and statistics to explain it to the rest of us? Because I recall knowing people who did terribly in one school's lottery, but very well in another's. Let's call the first one school A and the second school B. Granted they preferred school A to school B, but they still vastly preferred school B to schools C & D & E - not to mention their local neighborhood school. So, even though they preferred A, they still got lucky with B. Now, under the new system, the low number they got lands them at the bottom of the pile and they only get into school N or O or P. How far down do parents have to fall because of one bad draw?

The lottery concept works when everyone isn't competing for the exact same schools. But the reality is that they are. It's not a matter of "I want something in Ward 7 or Ward 8, but I'll take Two Rivers or Oyster as a last choice" vs. "I'd really rather have Yu Ying or LAMB, but otherwise I want Payne or Miner." No. Thousands of people want a few dozen seats. At least multiple lotteries gave them multiple chances at multiple schools. Sorry you didn't get Mundo Verde, but at least you got Cap City! Now if you blow up once, that's it: better luck next year.

You don't get it. It's ok. It's not about "my friend got more lucky a few years ago" blah blah blah.

No need to be so snide, it was a genuine question. I am not a mathematician, which is why I specifically asked for you to explain it. Which I notice you did not do. Maybe "trust me, I'm smarter than you are, so this is better" works for you, but it doesn't satisfy everybody.

There are the same number of players and the same number of spaces, so the overall odds are the same of any individual person getting a spot somewhere. So, it's just like flipping a coin 12 times v. flipping a many sided die w/ the same H-Ts outcomes distributed in the same manner only once. It may feel like you have a better shot of getting 9 heads when you get to flip the coin 12 independent times, but you have just a good a shot at flipping the big die onto "9 heads" once... since the odds are, definitionally, the same. Then, in terms of distributing the outcomes to maximize every individual's preferences as between spots, the current system is better because two people will never be in a position where they will both be better off if they voluntarily swapped, because the person with the better lottery draw would have gotten the worse lottery draw's spot if they actually wanted it more. Does that help at all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People who are fondly remembering the old system forget the complaints.

Applications necessarily done online - people had to run all over town to submit applications and some got lost. Lack of transparency or trust in the lottery draws because they were done at each school. The multiple different deadlines. And the people who sat on multiple yes's meaning significant student movement for weeks into the new year.

There are simply more people entering the lottery now than 4-5 years ago. And not enough new seats have been created to keep up with demand. That's the reason for the tightness you are feeling.

It is deeply related to the shortage of real estate appropriate for a school which has slowed the charter sector growth significantly. This was a DCPS strategy to maintain / increase market share. And it's working.

The dictatorial strategy of "starve them until they're desperate, and then they will thank us for the crumbs we toss them." So, Stalin and Kim Jong Il were Kaya's role models. How inspiring...

[Anonymous]

We knew we wanted to shoot for a lottery spot in PS-3 and were living in Adams Morgan at the time. We made the mistake of putting a lot of schools on our initial lottery that were based more on word of mouth from friends of ours who had kids at the same time, or high test scores, but were in a neighborhood we honestly would be able to trek to (Capitol Hill) or were small with literally no OOB slots and a long wait list (Ross etc.) What we did right was visit as many schools as we could during the school year while students were there and attend open houses. We got into a couple of charters(but not all) and were also surprised to find the local OOB-proximity school in a neighborhood where we were house shopping was actually quite good. That was a heavily Title 1 school that had higher test scores, a good principle - it was an up and coming school then, now the OOB wait lists are quite long.
Also think about your commitment to immersion language and be sure to visit individual charters and DCPS that have what you think you are looking for.

[Anonymous]

We are commuting cross town for a WOTP school now but there are a lot of good EOTP schools. We miss the school, our teachers, the proximity, the leadership there every damn day while braving the commute but we are happy with the particular school we are in now, the teachers are OK, the new friends, green space, the extracurriculars, the campus itself, the feeder set-up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
One more https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-unique-applicants-on-wls-by-grade.pdf

Thank you for posting this list. I'm realizing that a huge number of students don't get in anywhere for PK. DC clearly needs more school options - even though the number of slots for students has been rising rapidly, the number of students seems to be rising even more rapidly. I wonder what the prospects are for:
1) WOTP schools to offer PK3 (Potentially parents who would aspire to move to a WOTP neighborhood eventually stay EOTP until their children are older to have an opportunity for PK3)
2) A guaranteed slot for PK3 at neighborhood schools instead of starting at kindergarten (some parents are perhaps choosing the lottery instead of their in-bounds school because of the lack of guarantee?)
3) Either additional schools open or existing schools expand their programs

Interested what people think of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
One more https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-unique-applicants-on-wls-by-grade.pdf

Thank you for posting this list. I'm realizing that a huge number of students don't get in anywhere for PK. DC clearly needs more school options - even though the number of slots for students has been rising rapidly, the number of students seems to be rising even more rapidly. I wonder what the prospects are for:
1) WOTP schools to offer PK3 (Potentially parents who would aspire to move to a WOTP neighborhood eventually stay EOTP until their children are older to have an opportunity for PK3)
2) A guaranteed slot for PK3 at neighborhood schools instead of starting at kindergarten (some parents are perhaps choosing the lottery instead of their in-bounds school because of the lack of guarantee?)
3) Either additional schools open or existing schools expand their programs

Interested what people think of this.

Very unlikely. PK3 and PK4 is not a compulsory year in DC for good reason.

However, in the areas of most need (about 1 dozen Title 1 or likely Title I schools) they have now made PK3 and PK4 guaranteed to all IB students who enter Round 1 of lottery and list that school first.

The problem is parents are acting like they have a RIGHT to PK3 and PK4. And they don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
One more https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-unique-applicants-on-wls-by-grade.pdf

Thank you for posting this list. I'm realizing that a huge number of students don't get in anywhere for PK. DC clearly needs more school options - even though the number of slots for students has been rising rapidly, the number of students seems to be rising even more rapidly. I wonder what the prospects are for:
1) WOTP schools to offer PK3 (Potentially parents who would aspire to move to a WOTP neighborhood eventually stay EOTP until their children are older to have an opportunity for PK3)
2) A guaranteed slot for PK3 at neighborhood schools instead of starting at kindergarten (some parents are perhaps choosing the lottery instead of their in-bounds school because of the lack of guarantee?)
3) Either additional schools open or existing schools expand their programs

Interested what people think of this.

But while people don't all get matched with schools they lotteried for, there are more seats for both PK3 and PK4 than applicants city-wide. But not all are deemed desirable or geographically feasible.

https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-applications-and-seats-offered.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
One more https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-unique-applicants-on-wls-by-grade.pdf

Thank you for posting this list. I'm realizing that a huge number of students don't get in anywhere for PK. DC clearly needs more school options - even though the number of slots for students has been rising rapidly, the number of students seems to be rising even more rapidly. I wonder what the prospects are for:
1) WOTP schools to offer PK3 (Potentially parents who would aspire to move to a WOTP neighborhood eventually stay EOTP until their children are older to have an opportunity for PK3)
2) A guaranteed slot for PK3 at neighborhood schools instead of starting at kindergarten (some parents are perhaps choosing the lottery instead of their in-bounds school because of the lack of guarantee?)
3) Either additional schools open or existing schools expand their programs

Interested what people think of this.

Very unlikely. PK3 and PK4 is not a compulsory year in DC for good reason.

However, in the areas of most need (about 1 dozen Title 1 or likely Title I schools) they have now made PK3 and PK4 guaranteed to all IB students who enter Round 1 of lottery and list that school first.

The problem is parents are acting like they have a RIGHT to PK3 and PK4. And they don't.

See, I would say the problem is DC does not plan very well. Why offer PS3 in some areas when less than 50% of the IB kids can get into the program? I understand they are not guaranteed seats but I shouldn't have a better chance of winning money on a scratch off than getting my kid into their neighborhood school. I think this is one of the things the lottery is trying to hide by only releasing the WL movement numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
One more https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-unique-applicants-on-wls-by-grade.pdf

Thank you for posting this list. I'm realizing that a huge number of students don't get in anywhere for PK. DC clearly needs more school options - even though the number of slots for students has been rising rapidly, the number of students seems to be rising even more rapidly. I wonder what the prospects are for:
1) WOTP schools to offer PK3 (Potentially parents who would aspire to move to a WOTP neighborhood eventually stay EOTP until their children are older to have an opportunity for PK3)
2) A guaranteed slot for PK3 at neighborhood schools instead of starting at kindergarten (some parents are perhaps choosing the lottery instead of their in-bounds school because of the lack of guarantee?)
3) Either additional schools open or existing schools expand their programs

Interested what people think of this.

But while people don't all get matched with schools they lotteried for, there are more seats for both PK3 and PK4 than applicants city-wide. But not all are deemed desirable or geographically feasible.

https://ms-dc.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/2016-lottery-applications-and-seats-offered.pdf

Actually, it looks like they are ~800 short for PK4 and 94 short when you add PS3 and PK4 together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should read this:

https://www.washingtonian.com/2014/03/24/how-not-to-get-your-kid-into-kindergarten/

Dated information.

Not that dated. Although I wish she would do a follow up.

I agree it is not dated at all. The core of the article is about the hoops parents jump through for a situation that is largely beyond their control. The single driving factor is the lottery number. A high lottery number means that you'll get one of your top picks, and a low number means you'll get one of your low picks. The strategy of it is really all at the low end: trying to identify a few schools you could live with for a year, which hopefully no-one else has identified, and maybe get luckier next season. Nothing about that has fundamentally changed.

It is the calculus that makes me question the value of the common lottery. Yes, I know it was designed by a prize-winning mathematician and I readily concede he is smarter than I am. I simply submit that the model was originally about getting med students into their desired internships, and by and large med students are highly mobile (for the most part they don't have children and mortgages). In the case of the DC school lottery, we're talking about data points that are much more fixed (even if the school 4 miles away is available, that doesn't necessarily make it feasible for any given family to attend). At least with the old system, if you really wanted Spanish Immersion, and you bombed out in the LAMB lottery, you had another shot with the Stokes lottery; with the DC Bi lottery, with the MV lottery, with DCPS ranking Oyster, Cleveland, Tyler, etc. Now if you get a great number you run the table and if you get a bad number you're left with the dregs.

Med students have strongly different geographical preferences, different specialty preferences, and can easily move. This is not representative of EOTP families competing for the exact same spots.

This is true and I think the old system, while messy, distributed the odds more fairly because everyone had multiple shots.

This is not true. The odds are not distributed more with multiple lotteries. A person with a lucky lottery number can only pick one school, then the other options they had trickle down. There's still the same amount of spots and offered to same amount of people. I can understand how it feels otherwise if you've been dealt a bad lottery number, but don't let your personal experience ignore statistics.

Then can you use some probability theory and statistics to explain it to the rest of us? Because I recall knowing people who did terribly in one school's lottery, but very well in another's. Let's call the first one school A and the second school B. Granted they preferred school A to school B, but they still vastly preferred school B to schools C & D & E - not to mention their local neighborhood school. So, even though they preferred A, they still got lucky with B. Now, under the new system, the low number they got lands them at the bottom of the pile and they only get into school N or O or P. How far down do parents have to fall because of one bad draw?

The lottery concept works when everyone isn't competing for the exact same schools. But the reality is that they are. It's not a matter of "I want something in Ward 7 or Ward 8, but I'll take Two Rivers or Oyster as a last choice" vs. "I'd really rather have Yu Ying or LAMB, but otherwise I want Payne or Miner." No. Thousands of people want a few dozen seats. At least multiple lotteries gave them multiple chances at multiple schools. Sorry you didn't get Mundo Verde, but at least you got Cap City! Now if you blow up once, that's it: better luck next year.

You don't get it. It's ok. It's not about "my friend got more lucky a few years ago" blah blah blah.

No need to be so snide, it was a genuine question. I am not a mathematician, which is why I specifically asked for you to explain it. Which I notice you did not do. Maybe "trust me, I'm smarter than you are, so this is better" works for you, but it doesn't satisfy everybody.

NP here, I agree PP was a bit dismissive of your question but maybe you are new to DCUM. When the common lottery came in a couple (2? 3?) years ago there were a million threads on this question and many of us, myself included, brushed off our stats knowledge and tried to be helpful and explain. But DCUM has a poor search function (not your fault) so here you are asking again.

Think about it, the number of parents wanting spots and the number of spots total at the desirable school doesn't change from one lottery system to another, so how could your overall odds of getting a spot at Magic Charter School be better or worse. They are not. What the new lottery avoids is a situation in which a lucky number person gets a spot at Magic when really what they wanted was a spot at Unicorn. If there was a way to trade with an equally lucky person at Unicorn with a preference for Magic, they would do the trade, but no mechanism exists. The new lottery system just creates those trade possibilities and executes them automatically, so everyone gets into the most preferred of their choices that is possible to give them, *holding their lottery luck constant*.

The exact same number of people will be shut out entirely under each system, where "shut out" is defined however DCUM wants to define it because in September there are always slots open at schools in Wards 7-8.