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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Lets be honest - this is tough stuff to understand (see previous 22 pages.) I doubt many of the people even RUNNING the process truly grasp every minute detail of the algorithm and how it sorts or works.  The person here who seems to have the strongest grasp is a self-admitted statistician who has likely had years and years of formal education in the field.

If I were in charge, I may withhold certain information that I could safely assume will only confuse the masses and thereby lead to an attempt at gaming the system that will only penalize them - them being everyone who hasn't had years and years of graduate level math.  In this case, the best instruction I could give them is the simple: rank in order of true preference.  [/quote]

I disagree. There is in fact no math at all needed to understand how the lottery works.  If the FAQ were a little better written this thread would have been one page instead of 22. Basically there are two problems with the FAQ:

1. There was always an institutional reluctance in DCPS (and now OSSE) to acknowledge that if families with a higher preference level get all the seats at a given school, those with lower preference have zero chance of getting a seat. So you get mealy-mouthed sentences like "When there are more students than spaces at a school, students who have a preference (such as a sibling preference) will be the first to be offered spaces. Then, random selection decides which other students will be offered spaces." And we spend 21 pages debating whether that means if in-boundary families take all the slots whether the chances for OOB are just smaller or truly zero.

2. The FAQ doesn't address the question of what happens to families that have more than one child in the same lottery, and two children get accepted into different schools. In fact, the FAQ has the apparently incorrect information that "students will be placed on the waitlist of any of the choices they ranked above the school where they were matched." The unstated exception to that rule is when a child has been accepted to a school the siblings will be kept on the waitlist even if they ranked it lower than the school where they were accepted.

I would also be more emphatic that the best strategy is always to rank your choices in your true order of preference, there is no reason to consider your chances of getting in.
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I disagree, with number 1. There is no reluctance in releasing information/questions answered.  My School DC has a hotline that is currently running and operating.  You can call them and ask them these questions directly without having to identify yourself, keeping anonymity.  Only DCPS schools have an "in-boundary" preference, therefore, it would only apply to them not charter schools.

For #2 - the information is NOT incorrect.  Students WILL be placed on those waitlists of the schools they ranked higher.  What this should indicate to parents is that, if they have more than one child applying for the lottery, if the grade levels they are entering allows, they should, in my opinion, rank the schools of both children equally.  That is, if John and Susie are entering the lottery, i would rank school A as the number 1 choice for both of the students.  This way, one can hope that they may have equal or better chances, but again, it is contingent upon available spaces, etc.

It seems very pessimistic to think somehow the education system is trying to "game" parents in any way.  The reason this was created was to give everyone a fair chance to apply to all schools.  Yes, there are some caveats to this because different schools have different preferences, specializations, etc. but the end result is that all families will be able to apply to a school they may not have had the opportunity to otherwise.  Furthermore, folks in the education system realize how stressful this system may be for families and are doing, in my opinion, as much as possible to relieve some of that anxiety.

As the saying goes, you can make all of the people happy some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but never all of the people all of the time. It's like saying because i strategically picked my Mega million lottery numbers, i should have won.  Everything will be at random, and everyone will have a fair chance.  Highly recommend all parents to rank at least 12 schools.  
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