Lotteries in Admissions to Academies

Is “where did” a brainfart, or am I too drunk even for an Arizonan proofreader?

This method of allocating places is used fairly often in American magnet/charter schools (i.e. public schools that are independent of their local districts). They end up with a somewhat better population of students all around — even though most, or sometimes all, of their students were chosen by lot. Why? Because a lottery result is quite different from a random cross-section of a district’s students. The children in the lottery have something in common, which is that their parent(s) care enough about education, and are savvy enough, sufficiently well-informed, etc., to enter them in the lottery.

I think it would be interesting to compare lotteries that do and do not require you to opt in. I think you might get a more perfect cross-section with the ones that require no action.

For university admissions, you would probably want a threshold of competence that the university determines is roughly what it takes to pass the classes; among the people who qualify, you could then use a lottery.

I am totally with you on this Harry. Have you written about this anywhere else?

This method of allocating places is used fairly often in American magnet/charter schools (i.e. public schools that are independent of their local districts).

Yes, though it is worth noting that magnet schools (unlike charters) are not independent of their local districts. We have an oversubscribed small magnet high-school in town here that chooses places by lottery. Before being finally forced to do so, it used criteria that had the intent and effect of preserving the places in the school for the children of the school’s self-identified insider ‘community’ (generally well-off white former counter-culture types). But the absurd contortions involved with the selection process (at one point there were people camped out in line for weeks) finally pushed the district to lay down the law and impose a lottery system.

Wasn’t this, in fact, the Scalia argument against affirmative action? If the University of Michigan wants a broader cross-section of the population (i.e., “diversity”), simply lower your standards for everyone, and then select in a race-blind manner, such as through a lottery.

Essentially that diversity is a fine goal, but since there are race-neutral ways to do it, why should we let you use race? The only advantage that affirmative action confers over a lower-standards/lottery option is increased eliteness for the white students, which is not really a valid goal.

I think this exams are lotteries idea is bogus. They aren’t always the best predictors of future performance, but they’re better than nothing. And sure, the difference b/w an 89 and a 90 may seem arbitrary, but if it is, then it functions as a randomization scheme and if it isn’t, then the 90 deserves to go ahead of the 89.

I also think part of what enables top schools to offer the quality of education they do is the quality of the students at the school. It allows the school to give the students more flexibility in choosing their own pathway and elevates the level of discussion in the classroom.

As someone who thinks that most of the real work is done by a small minority of people, I find the extent to which people are willing to go to ‘level the playing field’ disturbing.

Thanks nikolai,

I wrote about this in a pamphlet called “Educational Equality and the New Selective Schooling” published by the PESGB, which got a lot of press attention in early 2000, and, more briefly, in another pamphlet I wrote for the Social Market Foundation in 2002, which also got a lot of attention for a brief period. I think I advocated the idea in a piece in the Fabian Review, too, which will be hard to get hold of. I think some of the discussants would do wel to distinguish compulsory from higher education; this is a proposal that applies at age 11 (or 12), and is an alternative to methods of selection that are not arbitrary, but are designed (like those cited by slocum)to benefit children of middle class parents. My model was not charters etc, but vouchers — the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which uses lotteries for oversubscribed schools.

Could you get me a reference to Edgeworth? (or would googling do it?)

mpowell is right — most of the real work is done by relatviely few people. Is your worry that giving those people decent educational opportunities when they are children would result in no work being done at all?

Great idea, jason, let’s repeal the child labour laws and factory acts while we’re at it.

Harry,
No- I realize that my first response was slightly off topic b/c it really only addresses the question of higher education. I would hate to see elite universities go to a broad lottery system. And I do hear this idea mentioned from time to time. The experience would no longer be the same and the top students would no longer be getting the best education possible. I think that would be a significant loss.

The situation is different for earlier levels. I still think there might be some place for access-limited (based on merit) magnet schools. But it would be inappropriate for these to affect the quality of education offered in the rest of the system, and I’m not sure if that is possible. Here I agree that random selection is a better way to go than, as you point out, other methods designed to discriminate against lower class families.

One additional point: in your article you mentioned including incentives for schools to include less ‘desired’ pupils. A similar system is used in Texas and it results in schools classifying students as learning disabled when they are not. When those students are then placed in corresponding programs, their education does suffer. Have you considered these types of problems or possible solutions?

So a lottery for professors would be good right?

A lottery for professors would be no worse than what we have as long as the qualifications to enter the lottery were high. As I said, you really don’t find much difference in the top ten.

sebastian,

you weren’t listening…. This is about sorting at age 11. But I do agree with Eli on this.