Anne Newman: Charter School Lotteries

This Friday Anne Newman of WUSTL Education presented a paper entitled, "Luck of the Draw?  On the Fairness of Charter School Admissions Policies."  The paper is a joint project between Newman and Jonathan Dolle of Stanford University.  (Unfortunately Dolle was unable to make it out to Saint Louis for the workshop.)  

Unlike most of the papers presented at WPES, Newman and Dolle's work is aimed at the policy-making community, rather than the academic one.  In other words, their recommendations on how to reform charter school lotteries are ultimately going to be presented to individuals and committees with the power to implement those recommendations, which is quite an exciting prospect.  We wish Newman and Dolle the best of luck in their persuasive efforts.

Newman began her presentation by pointing out that there is a gap between the rhetoric supporting charter schools and the reality of their implementation, and "the integrity of findings about charter schools' [generally positive] outcomes is contingent upon the integrity of their admissions processes."  Though most charter schools utilize a form of lottery system so that the opportunity for attendance is randomized, Newman argues that many of these lotteries are often operated in ways that may compromise these lotteries' seeming fairness.  

Our discussant today was Zach Hoskins of WUSTL Philosophy.  He began by summarizing Newman's argument:

the only way to know that a charter school lottery had a fair outcome is to know that it used a fair process.  Unfortunately, such lotteries are difficult to conduct in ways that are publicly fair and transparent.  For instance, though "federal law explicitly prohibits charters from incorporating certain types of preferences into their lotteries, charters can easily influence the pool of students seeking admission (and therefore the final student body) through targeted marketing practices outside the lottery admission process."

Thus, Newman argues that such lotteries need to meet three standards of fairness in order to be truly impartial in their allocation of a vital but scarce good:

1.  Procedural fairness - does the procedure used treat like cases alike?

2.  Substantive fairness - is the procedure used a fair procedure?

3.  Public fairness - is the procedure understood and accountable publicly?

To meet all these standards, Newman recommends that charter schools make three main changes to the admissions process:

1.  "Establish clearer laws on allowable preferences" since some deviations from the lottery are acceptable (e.g. sibling preferences) while others may be a mask for discrimination.

2.  "Establish clearer laws about what constitutes a 'public lottery'" to make sure that lotteries are public and accessible to participants.

3.  "Require that lotteries be conducted by independent third-parties" to prevent conflicts of interest by those conducting the lottery.

4.  "Require annual admission audits" to increase accountability.

Hoskins generally thought the paper was reasonable and compelling.  Moreover, he thought the policy recommendations presented were all quite apt ways to better the charter admissions process.  Thus, his comments focused on the philosophical underpinnings of the paper's recommendations.  Specifically, Hoskins focused on the conceptual distinction between fairness and justice.  Such a distinction is useful in clarifying, for instance, why it may be just (though unfair) to allow sibling preferences in charter school admissions.  Hoskins worried that some parts of the paper "risk diluting the notion of fairness such that it is essentially synonymous with the word bad," and he saw the distinction between justice and fairness as a way to preempt this problem.

This was most applicable on the Newman's standard of public fairness.  Hoskins argues that transparency is good, but that it isn't good for reasons of fairness: "A policy that is equally opaque to everyone doesn't seem to treat anyone unfairly" though it does treat everyone badly.

The general discussion at this workshop was a bit different than usual.  The crowd was a tad smaller, and this allowed for a measure of cross talk that was productive in a way that isn't very easy to capture in my writing here.  

Ian MacMullen of WUSTL Political Theory opened the discussion by building upon Hoskins' argument: MacMullen questioned whether publicity and transparency are merely items with instrumental value towards achieving goals of procedural and substantive fairness.  He also, said, however, that if publicity does have some value, that one of the most persuasive ways of demonstrating this might be a case where publicity conflicts with other important values and is still desirable.  

Here Newman defended her characterization of public fairness by saying that such transparency is required in order to not just actually have a fair procedure but also to treat fellow citizens as civic equals in their right to know and check that the procedure was fair.  She agreed that the conflictual example would be helpful and plans to include it in the next draft.


-Greg