Message
Yes, thank you!
It's at 1. Do they draw names out of a hat or is it done by computer? If done by computer, is it quick--ie can we show up at 1 just to get our #?
Anonymous wrote:Is this new location " permanent"? Or another short term lease?


Permanent.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Do yo think they will close FS but expand SWW?


F-S should become a magnet school, just like Walls. Create proficiency or near-proficiency as an admission requirement, and it would become a great school, and enrolled close to capacity for the first time in the 21st century.


???? - (DUHHH !?!?) Its almost like saying 2+2=4. Any school with admission requirement will become a great school and get the attention of parents that frequent this forum and parents that don"t want to sacrifice our kids to see if it is possible to really turn around a school without displacing the "undesirables."


Francis-Stevens will follow the path carved by charters. I don't think you have to go the magnet route...parents will self-select by their willingness to cart their children across town for a decent program. Those that can't get in through lottery or open seats will woo the principal with their 'influence' as seen at other schools in this neighborhood.


Wait, isn't F-S a low-proficiency school right now? What motivation do parents have to cart their kids over there, now or in the near future, without some incentive?


We are applying OOB and loved the school--is definitely changing under new leadership and 90% new teachers. We would consider ourselves lucky to get in.
The pointlessness is the point. We need something to keep us busy for the next few weeks. Carry on with speculation!
Anonymous wrote:Lots of confusion/fustration going on here, which is understandable. Keep in mind:

1) There is no secret ELL ("English language learner") preference. There is an explicit ELL preference, in the form of the sibling preference. At preK3 and 4, for all schools except dual language, IB beats OOB sib. But for dual language programs, OOB sib beats IB at those grades. This ensures that Oyster and especially Bancroft will maintain large numbers of ELL for some years to come. But from K onward, IB is guaranteed a spot.

2) If you are getting confused about your odds in a single lottery versus lottery for every school, just keep in mind that what doesn't change is the number of spots and the number of people applying. Suppose there are 3,000 families applying for 1,000 "desirable" preK4 spots this year. Then 2/3 of families will not get into any of these, no matter the lottery method.

It may be emotionally/pyschologically more appealing to be entered into a different lottery for each school because we "feel" we have a better chance. But we don't have a better chance - there are still 3 people competing for each seat, in that example. You have the same chance overall of getting a seat. But with the new algo, a better chance of an efficient result.

You will never know your lottery rank, BTW. You will know if you had broadly good, medium, or poor luck, based on your acceptance/waitlist status.

3) Every year there have been schools that have empty seats at most or all grade levels in September. These are the ultimate "safety"s. It used to be that a number of schools EOTP but west of the Anacostia river fit into this category, but due to gentrification and the low odds of getting into the best charters, this is changing. In future years there may be no such thing as a safety for preK3/4. There will always be a safety school for K onward: your IB school.

4) If you desire certainty of an excellent school from K onward, this can only be achieved by moving IB for your chosen DCPS school. If you desire certainty for preK3/4, as explained above, even IB may no longer be a sure bet, so we all need to accept that DC does not offer universal preK3/4. We take our chances in the lottery and if it doesn't work out we pay private or stay at home. Them's the breaks... we can also get involved with local politics and advocate for more prek3/4 seats, at our own IB schools or city-wide.



Completely agree with this--except note that Oyster can maintain goal of 50% native Spanish speakers because it actually holds a separate Spanish-speaker lottery.

There has *always* been a need for safety schools, because there simply are not enough spots at the most desirable schools. No lottery algorithm can change that (unfortunately for all of us!).
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
I've tried for the last five hours to make sense of the idea that one lottery number across all the schools on my list is somehow more beneficial to everyone.

And it just doesn't. Make. Sense.

First, if I'm #10,000 out of 10,000 total applicants for PK4, there's no way I'm getting in to any school anywhere. If every school has a wait list that places me based on that number, I will be at the bottom every time. Even if I have preferences, I'll be the loser in every tie-breaker. That simply cant't be the way this thing is run.

What makes sense is that I get assigned a random number at each school on my list. So I could be #303 out of 303 applicants at my top ranked school--
...

At the same time (not in a different round) my tracking number is entered into a lottery at my number 2 choice. Again, I have no preferences, and this time I've got a great number--#3! ...

My third choice is my inbound school and my so-so number, let's say #36 out 85, doesn't get me a seat, but I'm still ahead of an OOB, single-child family who got a better number--unless they ranked the school higher than I did.

But if I have a single sucky number across all schools, and my next door neighbor has #8 across all schools, she has a better shot at getting a seat at my 12th ranked school than I do. At the very least, she has a better shot at our IB school, which is definitely somewhere on her list. I can't see how I'm supposed to wait, round by round, for my 10k number to make way for all other preferences at all schools. THEN I get to enter round 2 along with all the families who missed the March 3 deadline. And then it's an entirely new lottery number that gets drawn at each school, but this time we're all vying for fewer seats and mostly trying for the best possible wait list number behind everyone who's already on it.

And now, I am completely worn out by the whole shebang.


NP here, and I edited the above for brevity. Couple of things to think about (dcmom is 100% correct in everything she's written so this is just to explain further):

1) You are focusing on how bad it would be to be last in the single-number lottery, e.g. #10,000 out of #10,000. But you have not considered that you could also be last in every single one of the 12 individual school lotteries you enter under the previous model. And although we don't have the sizes of any of these lotteries to compare, we can safely say that if you have the absolute worst luck, you will not get into any school under either model.

2) This scenario in bold, where you get nothing in the first round - no lottery process can prevent this! There simply aren't enough spots at the in-demand schools. At least the current model makes it as efficient as possible ( efficient meaning no pareto-improving trades are possible, i.e., when the lottery is done, no-one can be made better off without making someone else worse off - this is what dcmom meant when she referred to "trades")




Completely agree with this response. This is why it is important to have safeties. My IB school is a great safety--goes through its entire waitlist each year and accepts all IB applicants in initial lottery. There are lots of schools EOTP that for this profile. Appletree Columbia Heights has 100 PK3 spots and called all 400+ people on their waitlist twice last year to fill their spots. You definitely can get in even with the last number in the lottery. But you have to have one or more safeties if you want to ensure a spot.

No lottery algorithm can make more spots available at the highly desirable schools.
The trades aren't necessary with a single lottery number. Everyone gets into the highest school they've ranked with an open spot. There is no situation where I prefer A but get into B and you prefer B but get into A. The results are similar to if they pulled your lottery number and started with school 1, going down until they find a school with an available spot.
I felt strongly that each school should randomly order lottery #s until I ran through an example with separate lottery numbers from each school and with a single number, and it came out so much better with a single number. People are more likely to get into a higher ranked choice, and you don't have the situation where mutually-beneficial trades are possible (a terrible part of the prior system). If someone gets a relatively good waitlist number at several schools, that person will not be able to accept multiple spots, so the effect is to basically continue letting people into higher-ranked choices while they release their less desirable choices to those with worse lottery numbers. I think this algorithm is a huge improvement over last year's based on the simulation I ran.
Anonymous wrote:I don't see how the following statement can be accurate if the process described above is correct: "Once I choose the school I'm applying to, I should rank them in the order that I actually want my kid to go. There is no benefit of being strategic in rankings."

If "The computer has everyone request a seat from their first choice school . . ." and then "the computer has everyone who did not get a spot in round 1 request a seat from their second-choice school," then it matters in what order you rank them.

To use Hill schools as an example: if I'm IB for Brent PK3 but slightly prefer the Reggio program at SWS, and don't like any other options, then I have a "strategic" decision to make. Let's say I have a 40% shot of getting a spot at Brent if I list it first but only have a 10% chance of getting into SWS by listing it first. In that case, I'd clearly list Brent over SWS, despite my preference, because by the second round Brent would be filled with other IB students. I'd basically be choosing between a 40% or 10% chance of getting into a school I find acceptable.





No, it doesn't make a final assignment in round 1. Look at my example above. It makes a temporary assignment and then in the next round considers everyone who applied in round 1 along with everyone who applied in round 2 and makes new assignments.

No benefit in ordering them strategically. In fact, it will hurt you, since you will not be considered for your top-choice schools unless you don't get into your bottom-choice schools.
Anonymous wrote:This is a question:

Let's pretend I am applying with no special preferances for PreK4.

I am applying to schools A, B and C.

My lottery # for PreK4 is 280.
so for schools A, B and C - anyone who has a lottery # less than 280 will across the board have priority in front of me?


The answer as anything with the lottery seems to be "it's complicated." Here's how the DME office explained it to me:

The computer has everyone request a seat from their first choice school. So in round one, the computer has you request school A, and let's just say it's a public non-dual language school. School A say has 50 people request seats from them, but they only have 30 seats. Of the 50 who apply in round one, let's say 5 people apply who are in-boundary with siblings, 10 people apply who are in boundary, 2 people apply out of boundary with siblings, and everyone else is just out of boundary. They take everyone they can from the preference category -- 17 people -- and then they have 33 applicants left for only 13 out of boundary spots. Of the 33 applicants, they take the first 13 lottery numbers. So if you are 280, then it depends on whether there were 13 people out of boundary who applied to your #1 school in round 1 of the lottery. Let's say there aren't, there are only 12, then you get the 13th spot. But it's only a temporary assignment.

In round 2, the computer has everyone who did not get a spot in round 1 request a seat from their second-choice school. Let's say someone else put school A as their second-choice school and they are in-boundary. All the people who got temporarily assigned to the school in round 1, along with all the people who bid in round 2, are now compared by the computer. Again, the seats first go to those with preferences. So even though you were temporarily assigned a seat in round 1, now in round 2 someone who is in-boundary gets a seat and knocks you onto the waitlist.

The process continues to the next round. At the end of round 2, anyone not assigned (which now includes you) bids on their next-lower choice. For you, it is choice B. The same process continues on and on until it has iterated through everything.

The DME office told me that the Nobel Prize people who came up with it said the outcomes are much better when only one lottery number is used, which is why they are going with that. This seemed counter-intuitive to me, but I tried it out with my own example and they are absolutely right--more people are matched with a higher-ranked option with just one lottery number, and you always get into the highest-ranked school with availability when there is just one number. When I ran it with a unique lottery number for each school, there were people who should be "traded"--i.e., someone who preferred A but got into B, and someone who preferred B but got into A. Using a single lottery number in the example I ran made it so this never happened.

It is a very different algorithm from what was used last year, which essentially had each DCPS running its own lottery but then letting people only be assigned to one school.

Hope this helps. I'm a total data geek, which is why I asked them. Obviously, understanding the algorithm makes no difference to how it actually plays out. Main thing I took away from my discussion is that:

1) I should have at least one "safety" school, since I may have number 10,000/10,000 PK3 applicants and I want to make sure my kid goes somewhere. That's why I explored my in-boundary school and decided to apply. It is not a popular school and historically all in-boundary applicants get in during the initial lottery. I also added a few other schools that are convenient and traditionally go through their entire waitlist.

2) Once I choose the school I'm applying to, I should rank them in the order that I actually want my kid to go. There is no benefit of being strategic in rankings.
I am PP who talked extensively to the DME about this.

The tracking number is based I believe on when you initially registered for my school DC. It is not your lottery number. But PP is correct--all applicants for one grade are sorted in order and that order is used for all schools. So, say there are 10,000 students applying for PK3; the students' tracking numbers are randomly ordered, and that random ordering--what people here are referring to as a single lottery number--is used for each process in the iteration. That number is used to break ties among people with the same level of preference. So if I have a sibling attend a charter school, then my applicant will get in over all other applicants who don't have a sibling. However, if there are more applicants with siblings than there are spots, then the random lottery number will be the tiebreaker, and those with the best lottery numbers get in. Everyone else is waitlisted in the order of the random lottery number.

Not everyone applies to all schools, and you are dropped from waitlists of schools you rank as less desirable from the school you get into, so your actual position on waitlists will vary based on whether you qualify for a preference category (in-boundary for PK3/4, proximity, sibling, founder for charter, etc.), who else applied to the school, and where the other applicants get in.

Remember, the tracking number is not the same as your lottery number. Just because you are # 20,000 doesn't mean you are #20,000 in the PK3 lottery. The computer will create the lottery order randomly after the lottery application closes.
Only public schools post the # of slots available, and it will be when you select the school in the application that it says how many are available. Charters don't post it.
Anonymous wrote:Do people really ride the bus to school?


Yes.
I will just say that my neighborhood school is not "rising" by any definition, and we really liked it and are going to rank it high (still don't know how high). The thought of commuting with my three-year-old to a school where I would have to take public transportation or drive by a very early hour is not appealing. I am also worried about not having friends who live nearby. I think in prior years, it was easier to apply to lots of charters and know that you could always fall back to schools near you since the DCPS lotteries were separate; this year, I am really carefully considering whether I want to be shut out of my close-by schools if I get into a top charter. Often, I find the answer is no. I have tried doing a driving commute and a public transit commute with my toddler and it did not go well either time.
Go to: