Lottery - no more knowing how many spots?

[Anonymous]

In years past, for DCPS at least, schools indicated in the lottery process how many OOB lottery spots they would offer for each grade. Does DCPS no longer do that or am I missing it?

[Anonymous]

I have not seen it (yet) either...

[Anonymous]

How would they ever know? You can register up to first day and through the year for K+ in DCPS. I've never seen an "oob availability" list.

[Anonymous]

In the past, DCPS would indicate by grade how many spots they would award. For PS3 and PK they would list the number of total spaces minus any early stages spots. Those would be filled by IB kids followed by any other applicants with some sort of preference followed by OOB. So if a school showed that they would offer 28 PS3 spots you would know that the school had budgeted for two sections of PS3. That's useful info for trying to be realistic about your chances. And for gears K and up, DCPS had traditionally indicated, by grade, how many OOB spots would likely be offered. I guess that's no more?

[Anonymous]

They haven't done this for 2 years now. Was a decision by DCPS not to share this. Their reasoning was outlined during MSDC board meetings and is detailed in the meeting minutes posted on the MSDC website.

[Anonymous]

They don't release this because they want to discourage people from shaping their lottery lists based on how many seats there may be. Rank in order of true preference as if your number was pulled first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They don't release this because they want to discourage people from shaping their lottery lists based on how many seats there may be. Rank in order of true preference as if your number was pulled first.

What a wonderfully paternalistic choice they've made; such a way to build confidence and trust in a system which doesn't even trust me with knowing how many seats are available! I asked the local principal how many seats our school would offer, and while she said there would be 28 3 year old seats open, I'd really like to avoid asking every schools I'm interested in the same question when it should be online.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They don't release this because they want to discourage people from shaping their lottery lists based on how many seats there may be. Rank in order of true preference as if your number was pulled first.

What a wonderfully paternalistic choice they've made; such a way to build confidence and trust in a system which doesn't even trust me with knowing how many seats are available! I asked the local principal how many seats our school would offer, and while she said there would be 28 3 year old seats open, I'd really like to avoid asking every schools I'm interested in the same question when it should be online.

Take it up with the new chancellor. This was the position taken by the old one. But for now you need to ask each school. Or you can see how many students are in each grade for every school on their learndc.org page. It won't tell you when a school plans to add one, but it gives you the current state.

[Anonymous]

Yes, DCPS, please give us less info. Super helpful.

[Anonymous]

I get those saying "we want more not less info" but what if that info is bogus? Whether or not your rationality is influenced by it, in fact especially so if it is, bogus information is worse than no information. The fact is that most experienced principals will not truly disclose haw many OOB slots they expect to offer. They simply sprinkle a few into the lottery to signal that there are (when there are). Having worked on LSAT's often enough, I know you can see situations where a principal may put, say, 3 seats into the lottery knew full well that there would be at least 30 to be filled. There are more extreme cases than that. That is their rationality in response to the incentives the lottery system provides, as much as it may be yours to look to those (bogus) numbers for guidance.

Worse, instead of providing actual, helpful information, it did nothing but confuse about what else those numbers might mean: What!? That many OOB kids? Why so many? What's going on there? Nothing wrong with that but how is that helpful if the actual OOB numbers have literally nothing in common with the numbers that the principals would want to disclose in the lottery?

[Anonymous]

Is there still data on how many OOB got lottery spots in the past?

If there's no data on realistic changes of OOB placement, then less saavy parents will lose out because they might fill their list with Janney, Brent, CMI, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there still data on how many OOB got lottery spots in the past?

If there's no data on realistic changes of OOB placement, then less saavy parents will lose out because they might fill their list with Janney, Brent, CMI, etc.

Well OOB doesn't apply to CMI. It's available for K and above. Just not for Pk3 and Pk4

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there still data on how many OOB got lottery spots in the past?

If there's no data on realistic changes of OOB placement, then less saavy parents will lose out because they might fill their list with Janney, Brent, CMI, etc.

Agree, if they really want parents to rank in order of true preference, they should let you rank an unlimited number. Since you can only get into one, it shouldn't matter. Limiting the list to 12 favors parents who have time to investigate how things have turned out in past years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there still data on how many OOB got lottery spots in the past?

If there's no data on realistic changes of OOB placement, then less saavy parents will lose out because they might fill their list with Janney, Brent, CMI, etc.

Well OOB doesn't apply to CMI. It's available for K and above. Just not for Pk3 and Pk4

Right, but you should at least be able to see how many non-sibs got spots in the previous year? Why not?

[Anonymous]

Knowing how many spots does want? Increase your anxiety when you find out the school had 40 spots and you still didn't win the lottery.