Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

We investigate the extent to which the unified lottery for traditional and public charter schools in Washington, DC—serving over 20,000 applicants per year—can be used as a tool to improve lottery outcomes for applicants that are at-risk of academic failure. Seats available at high-performing schools are a finite resource. These schools are typically highly demanded and fill many available seats according to preference rules used by the unified lottery. The potential for lottery preferences that prioritize at-risk students to socioeconomically diversify school populations is limited because the lottery only places new students. The strongest preference contemplated in this analysis, giving at-risk students the top priority out of all applicant groups, would improve lottery outcomes for 8.2% of the 7,432 applicants identified as at-risk. As the preference weakens, a smaller percentage of at-risk applicants will have improved lottery outcomes. We document the extent to which giving an advantage to at-risk students through different strengths of lottery preferences disadvantages other applicants’ lottery results. Overall, outcomes depend on the strength of the preference and a local education agency’s decision-making to give a preference that will displace other applicants without that advantage.