Reply to The downside of the DC school lottery

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "The downside of the DC school lottery "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think where your confused is you think that someone with a high lottery number gets into all of their choices, and that someone else is kept from getting those seats. That's not how it works. Someone with a high lottery number gets into their first choice.

Changing the way the draw is done doesn't change the number of seats. The only question to ask about a system is whether once it's all done, are there any two people who would be willing to trade with each other and each be happier? If so, then the system is flawed.

The current system is designed so that it never happens that mutually beneficial trades exist, so long as people put in their true preferences. That also means that strategizing or gaming is impossible, the best outcome for any individual is to put in their true preference. [/quote]

Seems pretty clear to me the discussion is about increasing draws while maintaining the true preference system.

The current system has one draw per year per child.
The proposed system has one draw per school per year per child.

It’s not about “getting into all of their choices”.
It’s about hedging risk and preventing total “bad years” for students in the lottery.

It appears the best outcome for any individual in the proposed system is also to put in their true preference.

So far, we haven’t seen any legitimate criticisms of the proposal, just some critiques based on poor understanding.  (I think it’s likely there are some downsides with the proposal — just none have yet been brought forth.)[/quote]

Yes, PPs above have pointed out some logical problems with the proposed system: it will lead to situations where there are mutually beneficial trades. For example, imagine there are two students who each rank two schools:

Student 1: School A, School B
Student 2: School B, School A

Now imagine there is only one seat left at both schools. Under the proposed system, it is possible that Student 1 could end up at B and Student 2 could end up at A, meaning both students got their less desirable choice. This would happen if each student got a poor draw for their respective first choice school and a great draw for their second choice school.

Under the current system, this outcome is not possible. With the hypothetical rankings above, Student 1 will always be matched to A and Student 2 always to B, which is everyone's preferred outcome.

One more point about "good" lottery years and "bad" lottery years. A good lottery year is when you get into a desired school and a bad lottery year is when you do not. By changing the lottery algorithm, you are not increasing the number of school seats a given person finds desirable, nor are you decreasing the number of kids vying for those seats. Therefore, my odds of having a good year (getting into a school I like) are not improved one bit. Hedging risks is something you can do with investments or crops, because you can diversify and spread them around. You can't do that here, because you are trying to place exactly one child into one seat.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics