The Kindergarten Lottery: 10 Tips from a CPS Parent By Jocelyn Viterna CPS Parent and Professor of Sociology at Harvard University Posted to the cpsparents Yahoo Group in November 2013 The Kindergarten lottery is upon us! Whether you re a parent going through the lottery for the first time, or a parent who is advising friends who are entering the lottery, I hope the following advice may be helpful to you. 1. Please critically evaluate your information sources. There is a lot of playground talk in Cambridge about which schools you should want, and which schools you should avoid. If someone gives you advice about schools, please ask about the source of their information. You should not base your school decision upon what everyone else says. Parents who have never set foot in my kids school have said remarkably inaccurate things based on their assumptions about our school. Even when I tell them that their comments have no basis in reality, they struggle to let the rumors go. Your job as a parent is to separate the good info from the bad. Good decisions are based on good information; not on rumors. 2. Visit as many schools as possible not just the schools you already think you re interested in. Some things to pay attention to when you visit: What are the grown-ups doing? All kids have an off day; the important thing is to observe how the adults handle any situation that arises. What can you observe about the school culture? What is their mission, their values, their methods of promoting good behavior, etc? Does it feel like a good fit with your own world view?
What do students do during the day? How do they learn core courses? What activities do they engage in within the classroom? What opportunities do they have to extend beyond the core? Do they get enough exercise, math, science, art, etc to make you happy? Do you prefer a shorter day or a longer day? Again, figure out if these opportunities mesh with your family preferences. You might find that the best fit comes from surprising places. 3. Ask all your questions even the tough ones. When you visit a school, be assertive. Ask all the questions you want to ask. If you have a concern about a school, you need to tell the principal or the family liaison what the concern is, and ask them whether and how they would address it. Some questions don t feel proper or polite, but frankly, you gotta let that go this is your kid s education that we re talking about! You need to get the answers! Now that I m on the other side of the lottery, I realize that school administrators would much rather have you ask about your concerns and have a chance to address them than have your concerns go unanswered and thus affect your choice. 4. Challenge Preconceived Notions. When you visit a school, be aware of your own preconceived ideas and how they might be influencing your perception of that school. If a school or a student body doesn t look like what you grew up with, it might make you uncomfortable, and that discomfort might color your evaluation of the school. But interrogate your reactions, and try to remember that what feels comfortable is not the same thing as what is best for your child. What an amazing gift is it to give your child an educational experience that helps to expand his or her comfort zone and experience the wonder of having friendships with those who have backgrounds that are far different from yours.
5. Forget Test Scores. Research makes clear that tests scores tell us very little about the intellect of a student body or the quality of instruction in the classroom. It speaks far more to the life experiences of the students. For example, if your student body has a higher percentage of students who do not speak English as their primary language, or students who do not have as much experience with books or computers, then your school is likely going to do more poorly on exams than are schools where most students are native English speakers and where most students started texting when they were two. In my mind, what is more important than test scores is to find out how the same student grows and thrives from one year to the next in a school, and how well schools (and their teachers) are equipped to teach a variety of skills in one classroom. If you find a school where teachers can meet and challenge both the best performer and the poorest performing student equally, then you ve also found a school where teachers are going to be well-equipped to address all the variation within YOUR student. My son, for example, reads way above grade level, but he can t write worth a darn I m thrilled to have teachers who make sure he is never bored in reading by challenging him at the high level he s performing at in reading while making sure he gets the extra support he needs with his fine motor skills. I personally suspect that teachers who are accustomed to meeting a wide variety of needs across their classroom are also particularly adept at meeting the diversity of needs within your child. Perhaps most importantly, test scores can t capture all the richness that your child might gain from having a student body with a diversity of strengths. For example, having more non-native English speakers in the classroom may lower test scores, but think of all the amazing crosscultural diversity and knowledge that your student may learn through these friendships. When you visit schools, interrogate whether the instruction is excellent, and make sure the learning reflects your preferences and priorities. Excellent instruction and excellent learning are quite simply not well reflected in test scores.
6. School Choice is kind of like dating. It often seems like the lottery sets up this mentality that some people are winners and some are losers. You either get into one of the best schools, or you are stuck on a waiting list trying to reach the Promised Land. I was there once; I remember how it felt. But the funny thing is, on the other side, you start to realize that there is not an objectively best school for everyone. But there very possibly may be a best school for you and your family. My best friend in grad school had a million things in common with me. We liked the same work, the same sports, the same music. But when it came to dating, we had WILDLY different opinions about who made the best partner. Saying there are only three great schools that we all want to get into in Cambridge is a little like saying there are only three great people in Cambridge that we all want to date. That s ridiculous. What you value in a school is likely a lot different than what I value in a school. The perfect school for your friend s family may not be the perfect school for you and your family. So please, don t get hung up on what s best or worst. Focus on what works for you and your children. If you re like me, you might find that your friend s ideal school is far different from your own ideal. 7. The Family Resource Center cannot tell you which school you should choose. It s not their job and they are not allowed to share their personal preferences. Don t ask. Not only are they not allowed to, but they shouldn t. They don t have any better idea about what school will be a good match for YOUR FAMILY than do those well-meaning parents at the playground. We need to respect that those working at the FRC are professionals who need to keep personal preferences out of their work. 8. You Can t Control the Lottery. Now take a moment and breathe, cause I m going to say that again. You can t control the lottery.
And frankly, that s a GOOD thing. The whole idea of the lottery is to limit parent s control so as to assign schools in an equitable and unbiased manner. At first, this feels really frustrating. No one likes to feel like they can't control something related to their child's wellbeing. But if you take a step back, you realize that the lottery is set up this way to protect us all. If some parents could manipulate lottery results to work to their favor, then that would by definition take away choice from other parents. Having more parental control over the lottery wouldn t necessarily work in your favor. It wouldn t necessarily give YOU an advantage over other parents. It could just as easily give OTHER PARENTS an advantage over you. The lottery system may not be perfect. But I for one cannot think of any better way to assign schools in Cambridge. It s unbiased, impartial, and fair. And in most all cases, parents still DO have choice. Even if you don t get one of your top three choices, you often still have a chance to CHOOSE between other schools that still have space. And you might find that many of those schools outside your top three are still a great fit for your family. When I received a call saying we didn t get our first three choices, I was still given an option to choose between three other schools. We visited those three other schools, found one we LOVED, and have been happily ensconced there ever since. Indeed, when we had an opportunity to move off the waiting list and into one of our top schools, we said an emphatic no thank you.
9. We Are Our Schools. We sometimes act like our kids futures are going to be made or broken by what elementary school they get into, but we forget that those schools don t actually exist outside of us. Those schools ARE us. WE are our schools. If you want to go to a great school, then do your part to make sure your school is great. Build community. Talk to teachers. Join the PTO. Raise money. More importantly, raise hell. Stand beside your school s families, teachers, and administrators to make sure the school and the district leadership is working for the excellence of your children. Your involvement is way more important for you child s educational career than your lottery number. 10. In Conclusion In conclusion, you can t control the lottery. But just because you can t control the lottery doesn t mean that you can t shape your child s education. Your child s educational experience is determined by invested parents, invested teachers, and invested community members. It requires great leadership in our schools, in our district, and in our local level government. So I encourage you to look around. Visit as many schools as you can. Interrogate whether the vision of the school leadership is a good match for your own family's vision of education. Like my family, you might find that excellence exists in surprising places. And I encourage you to get involved because school excellence requires strong, collectiveminded, engaged communities. We are Cambridge Public Schools. And together, we, collectively, make Cambridge Public Schools great.