School lottery in New York can be easily fooled: parents are sounding the alarm

A Manhattan mom has discovered an unfortunate glitch in the city's Department of Education lottery system used to match middle and high school students. New York Post.

When NYC students filled out their online applications for the 2022-23 school year, each child automatically received a long string of random numbers from 0 to 9 mixed with lowercase letters a to f. Random numbers are used to determine the order in which students are assigned to programs. Lottery numbers starting with 0 will lead students to the school at the top of their list. Lottery numbers starting with higher numbers and letters are the least favorable.

As the mother of one 8th grader found out, if students canceled and renewed their entries, they received a different lottery number each time. The loophole allowed users to play with the system by re-applying until a profitable lottery number came up.

The reaction of the Ministry of Education

Parent leaders alerted Department of Education chief registrar Sarah Kleinhandler, who was unaware of the confusion and promised to look into it. Last week, the Ministry of Education insisted that “there is no failure in the system”, but they will take action.

The Ministry of Education identified 163 students who received new lottery numbers. This represents less than 1 percent of applicants. Among them, 121 students out of 71 high school applicants and 000 students out of 42 middle school applicants. Students who receive new lottery numbers after restarting their apps will receive their original lottery numbers back, an education ministry spokeswoman said.

“We are taking action. We are returning the lottery numbers of these students to their originally generated numbers. Affected families will be notified directly.”

How it turned out

A mom in Manhattan noticed that the original 32-digit lottery number her daughter received on February 26 began with “03.” Which would put her daughter at the top of the school list.

The mother then decided that her daughter should revise her list, putting the more desirable schools first. But when they canceled the app and relaunched it on March 10th, a new lottery number appeared. This one started with “ce”, which was not good at all.

Four days later, on March 14, they canceled and started again. This time it was a random number starting with “50”. It was worse than the first, but much better than the second option.

A mom from Manhattan spread the word about her amazing discovery, causing concern.

“This year, seasoned parents figured this out and re-applied for their child if they got a bad lottery number,” said an active parent committee member. “Other parents started with a good lottery number and changed it to a worse one without realizing it.”

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The solution

Queens High School teacher is alarmed: “The parents have discovered a technical glitch allowing them to keep trying to get the best lottery numbers. Even if only one family used this process to bypass the system, the whole process must be reversed and redone.”

Ministry of Education officials said they would "fix" the issue by removing the cancel feature in future admission cycles. Students can still change or rearrange the schools listed on their application without canceling or restarting.

Alina Adams, author of New York High School Admissions, has helped parents deal with the many shortcomings in applying to the program in recent years.

“The system is not set up to deal with any failures,” she said, “and when they try to fix them, they inevitably make things worse. This is a sure path to disaster.”

Students are expected to receive their school selection results in June.