Reply to Fairness of Common Lottery?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Fairness of Common Lottery?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Nooooo, under the "separate lotteries for each school within the common lottery" idea if you rank the school #1, you still have a better waitlist number for your #1 than anyone who ranked it lower.  So first off, NO you do NOT have the equivalent of the worst number in the lottery, not by a longshot.  Also, if you put safeties down that won't have a ton of people ranking it #1 (which happens now as well), you enter a separate lottery for everyone who ranked that school say #6, and it's entirely possible that if the people who ranked it higher don't chose it, you could still get in.  That doesn't change from one system to another.
[/quote]

You still either get in or you don't, and if you don't get in you're screwed. If you're going to order the waitlist by ranking, if you don't get into your #1 it's going to be very hard to get into your #2, you're behind everyone who put it #1, and for each subsequent pick it gets harder and harder.  Not getting your #1 is still tantamount to getting the last number in the lottery, you just have to wait until after the waitlist runs to learn that you're screwed.

[quote=Anonymous]
2. On what are you basing this idea that a family would put their #2 choice first?  Please give a specific scenario and reasons a family would do this, if you know you're probably opting out of your #1 if you don't rank it #1, explain to me the reasons that a family would put their #1 as #2?  Especially if their #2 is very popular and will likely fill up with #1s?
[/quote]

When my kids were in fifth grade I put Deal #1 for sixth even though they said they weren't accepting any OOB kids. I figured if I get an excellent lottery number I'll be high on the waitlist, who knows what will happen, and it doesn't cost me anything.  Under your proposal that would have been a very foolish thing to do, it would pretty much have prevented me from getting in anywhere unless I got into Deal.  What if I had drawn #1 in the lottery? I'd have given up a chance for a spot at Deal.
[quote=Anonymous]
3. How is your #3 different under either the current system or the proposed "separate lotteries by #1" system?  Why would a family under one system do anything differently under the other?  Again, please give a specific scenario, like what would a family do differently and why?

Just trying to understand your points.[/quote]

Under the current system your ranking doesn't affect your chance of getting into a school. (More precisely, you can't increase your chances. You can decrease your chances by ranking a school lower of course.) Changing how the slots are given out doesn't change the number of slots, so if you allow rankings to affect chances something has to give.  What gives is you increase the riskiness of putting a highly coveted school first. That risk disproportionately affects those with the fewest choices.[/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