Kindergarten Lottery information for 2011
What is this?
I was curious about how the Champaign Unit 4 School District assigned students via the
"Controlled Choice" program.
So I started asking questions; questions that started with "how does it work?" and led to
me getting curious about the technical details of how Dr. Alves of Enrolledu takes registration
information and smashes all the logistics into a program that churns out assignments. When I
asked for the low-level detail, my request became a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), and
eventually a comprehensive spreadsheet was delivered to me. This website is a front-end to view
the the data from that spreadsheet, which is now housed in a database.
So what do I do now?
Click on the buttons to the left! *grin*
You can view the data that I think best answers the given the question. If you want to pose another question (ie, query), please let me know and I'll add it. Also note that you can get a synopsis/explanation of the question and related data by clicking on the [?] near the question.
Changes in 2011
Several changes were evident in this year's data. When I say "tab" below, I am referring to the individual worksheets of the spreadsheet I received. They also correspond to the tables in the online database.
- The "LOTTERY DETAIL" tab is now simply "DETAIL".
- The "SEAT CONTROL" tab is now simply "SC".
- The "PRE ASG" (pre-assigned) tab was missing from this year. However, to offset that, the data in the "DETAIL" tab makes it much more clear which ones were pre-assigned.
- Some extra data was redacted this year that was not last year. In particular, the Program for each assignment in the "DETAIL" tab. This has large implications on my canned reports as I had to remove all query portions that dealt with program. This also means that the reports cannot account for program and must tally results across the board.
- Dr. Alves chose not to include the reason codes for why certain 4th and 5th choice (ch4stat, ch5stat) could not be filled. This is most evident on the "UN ASG" tab, where even though over half the parents made choices, the reason they did not make it is not listed.
- An addition this year is the "SP" seats, or "special education". I do not yet have any reports that take SP into account.
- The values in the `CH ASG` field have changed slightly - they are no longer purely numeric, but now alphanumeric and contain an indication if the student was pre-assigned.
- I believe the "ASG" information is new. The new fields that reflect this information (ie, asgsch, and particularly asgtag) help tell summary what factors helped this student achieve his/her assignement. I'll have to think about the ASGTAG a bit more. We also have the "SIBSTAT" field, which I think is new.
How do I download the spreadsheet?
You have a couple different options.
- From my blog (2011, 2010, 2009)
- For all the queries on this website, you can download a tab-seperated file, which Excel recognizes as a spreadsheet. Just click the "Export to tsv" button near the top in the left panel.
Disclaimers and apologies
I am a database person, not a web-designer. I tried to make this look nice, but realize it has
a long way to go before it could even be considered half-way decent to look at. Also, I am
not affiliated with Unit 4 at all, so take this data with a huge grain of salt; by no means
should this data be considered authoritative. But if you do end up filing your FOIA and
compare the data to what you see here, I would lay bets they would be strikingly similiar. *smile*
For the curious, technical information is also available.
Big shout out for Gordy Hulten, who provided the server-space for this site.