Another movie about school lotteries!

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Conall Boyle

First we had the movie by Madeleine Sackler The Lottery. Now along comes another one

 Waiting for “Superman,” in theaters this fall, offers the best evidence to date that charter schools are no longer a reform sought by conservatives alone: the film was directed by Davis Guggenheim of An Inconvenient Truth fame.

 You can read more about this movie (including a trailer which includes an actual lottery draw!) at

 http://www.firstshowing.net/2010/05/08/watch-this-davis-guggenheims-waiting-for-superman-trailer/

 I found out about this from reading an article about New York charter schools by Marcus A. Winters (a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute ) called ‘The Life-Changing Lottery’ in City Journal

 http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_3_democracy-prep.html

(Winters accepts uncritically the pro-charter research by economist Caroline Hoxby of Stanford U. Others doubt the efficacy of charters, notably Steven Levitt of Chicago and ‘Freakonomics’ fame. Both rely on the ‘natural scientific experiment thrown up by lottery choosing. Details in my new book ‘Lotteries for Education’)

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Experiments, schools | 5 Comments »

Researchers ‘prove’ Brighton school-lottery has failed

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Conall Boyle

School place lottery ‘did not improve access for poor’

A controversial lottery system for secondary school places has failed in one of its key aims – to give poorer children equal access to top schools, academics say.

(according to a BBC news item today http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11162313)

A paper, “The early impact of Brighton and Hove’s school admission reforms” from CMPO Bristol, is being publicised as showing that the lottery has failed in its aim of reducing social segregation. You can read the full version of this paper at www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2010/wp244.pdf.

The lottery is innocent! As researchers around the world have found, give parents the choice, and some (mostly middle-class) will eagerly seek out the ‘best’ schools. The others, the poor, the huddled masses will prefer their local schools (or more likely, be pestered by their kids to go to the local school with their mates.

It is ‘choice’ not lottery that does this. Lots more about this in my book, Lotteries for Education!

Filed under: Distribution by lot, schools | 3 Comments »

A grave lottery

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Conall Boyle

This is something I’ve never heard of before! Even in death, where you finish up can be a lottery. I suppose it makes sense.

Malden near Boston MA will release 60 new grave-sites firstly to local residents who apply. The winners, who will have to pay $5,710 per grave-site, will be chosen by a lottery.

Details (from a local news-site) are: Continue reading →

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It’s OK for Muslims to use lotteries

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Conall Boyle

That is the clear message from a new paper from Crone & Silverstein ‘THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND ISLAM: THE CASE OF LOT-CASTING’ in the Journal of Semitic Studies, 2010, 55(2):423-450.

The abstract includes

It focuses on the practice of using lot-casting to allocate inheritance shares, conquered land, and official functions, and briefly surveys the history of this practice from ancient through Hellenistic to pre-Islamic times in order to examine its Islamic forms as reflected in historical and legal sources. It is argued that the evidence does suggest continuity between the ancient and the Islamic Near East, above all in the first century of the hijra, but also long thereafter, if only at a fairly low level of juristic interest.

You can read the full paper ($25 for non-academics) at http://jss.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/55/2/423 (or go to my website www.conallboyle.com).

We have seen previously a case where the use of a lottery to share out goods has been rejected on religious grounds by Muslims: Lotteries for Cab Licenses.

This paper shows that although limited, lotteries can be found in the Quran (2 examples), and that most of the various strands of the Muslim traditions have accepted the judicial use of lotteries to divide property. (Thanks to Keith Sutherland and Anthony Barnett for drawing our attention to this paper.)

Filed under: Distribution by lot, History | Leave a comment »

Pity the poor moose in Maine

Posted on June 27, 2010 by Conall Boyle

Nothing unusual in the quaint old US custom of awarding huntin’ permits by lottery. (Fundamentally wrong in principle, of course; these valuable public assets should be auctioned off, not given away.) (Even better put an end to the slaughter for fun of these fine fellow-creatures.)

But in Maine this is a weighted lottery with a twist: Maine residents get better chances. You can also buy extra chances. But perhaps the oddest feature is that you are compensated for losing in a previous round. Details:

http://www.pressherald.com/news/luck-strikes-hunters-at-random_2010-06-18.html, or here http://www.maine.gov/ifw/licenses_permits/lotteries/moose/index.htm.

Is there a point to any of this? Well maybe we should think about mechanisms for compensating ‘lottery-losers’, especially multiple l-ls. This might apply to parents who miss their first choice school, and then their second, etc. When the prize is a big one unlucky losers will squeal. Read about the saga of Meike Vernooy in my new book “Lotteries for Education” – she changed the system.

Filed under: Distribution by lot | 5 Comments »

Women’s seat reservation lottery in India

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Conall Boyle

India, the ‘world’s largest democracy’ proposes lottery-cum-rotation to encourage women’s representation: Rajya Sabha (upper house of India) passes Women’s Reservation Bill  Mar 9, 2010

 NEW DELHI: The controversial yet historic Women’s Reservation Bill, ensuring 33% reservation to women in Parliament and state legislative bodies, was passed in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday after two days of high drama that saw suspension of seven members who violently disrupted proceedings.

 The bill seeks to reserve for women 181 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha and 1,370 out of a total of 4,109 seats in the 28 State Assemblies. 

(It seems that the 1/3 of constituencies to be reserved for women will be decided by a (one-off?) lottery; after that the ‘reserved’ constituencies will be rotated.) Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Mad-as-hell Icelanders won’t be taking it any more

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Conall Boyle

The ‘Sortition’ exercise is up and running in Iceland, yet we hear very little about it. Here’s a rare report from today’s Irish Times:

As part of a bold and ambitious initiative in active democracy, the first National Assembly was held in Reykjavik last month. Some 1,200 citizens randomly selected from the national register and 300 invited guests, including cabinet ministers and MPs, trade unions, representatives from the media and others, were brought together in a modern-style social partnership.

The task of the National Assembly, comprising 0.5 per cent of the population, was to plan a future vision for the country. People were asked what sort of society Iceland should now build in the aftermath of bankruptcy.

      Continue reading →

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Launch of Newid, the Demarchy party for Wales

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Conall Boyle

The best laid schemes of mice and men Go often askew, And leaves us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!

It would be fair to say that the launch did not go according to plan. This was largely due to Rhodri Morgan moving his farewell press conference to the same time as ours. But the Tories ran a spoiler where the only AM from an ethnic minority, Mohammed Asghar, suddenly switched to the Tories without a moment’s hesitation despite having been elected on the Plaid list.

So, in summary, we were totally drowned out of the news media but a few of us did meet and I ended up on the BBC Radio Wales lunchtime phone-in where they let me talk about demarchy for an hour. As a result, we now have people wanting to be candidates in the Cynon Valley and in Meirionnydd despite me forgetting to mention the website address. Every cloud and all that!

You can hear the coverage at this link until next Tuesday: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p4z2s/The_Radio_Wales_PhoneIn_08_12_2009/

We live and learn. I will not try a frontal assault next time.

All the best,

Martin

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