Reply to Pool size for TPMS and Eastern lotteries

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have always been told that what is at stake is the 1st quarter grade of the 5th grade year.  DC's teacher just also said to us recently that it is the main grade in the subject that is considered (not the subgrades).  Has anyone else heard the same or different?[/quote]

That is what has been used for the past 3 years. Prior to that, they used grades from 4th grade. They didn’t notify anyone (students, teachers, parents) that they were changing the criteria until after they conducted the review and sent out lottery results after winter break that year. So those 5th graders did not know that quarter 1 was the quarter that mattered until it was way too late. All to say that they can change the criteria at any time, they have a history of being opaque, etc. and they don’t seem to feel the need to actually communicate to families what the review process will include until they’ve already completed it.

Also, certain years kids seem to get only one offer from one magnet with no one winning the lottery from both, and other years it seems as though the lottery is run so that kids get offers from both at the same time (if in pool) and can choose. It’s never been explained.

Oh and don’t forget there is a set aside for kids in bounds for the school. A big chunk of seats are reserved for students in the zone. [/quote]

That's the nature of lotteries. They're random.[/quote]

You'd think, yes.  And the PP should take heed that those differences year to year are natural results of probabilistic randomness across independent lotteries.

Then again, the "lottery luck" of certain families across elementary Centers for Enriched Studies and criteria-based magnet middle schools, along with the then-higher likelihood of selection to HS magnet programs strains credulity. Not impossible, but...

DCCAPS uses a third party to conduct the lotteries.  One can hope that there are oversight mechanisms in place, but neither that nor transparency have been MCPS's strong suit to this point.[/quote]

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