[bigethan]

I disagree about the "fun" part having just gone through this with my first kid. I agree with the Dutch, swapping (at any point in time) adds an edge of unfairness to the process:

- In a situation where all decent schools are oversubscribed swapping 100% encourages (and rewards) setting up your school list strategically. Which helps out families that have the time to collect the information needed and sort their schools appropriately (we spent a bunch of time researching / planning here, but knew off other families who _really_ got into gaming the system)

- In one of the meetings where the slide you linked in [1] was displayed, they offhand mentioned that the swapping order is done alphabetically. When asked if kids with A* names will get better swaps they kinda ignored the question and moved on. But how are multiple tied swaps resolved?

- Also, from what we were told, the swapping doesn't respect the "lottery weight" that locals, poor test score neighborhood kids, or siblings get. If that's important, shouldn't it apply to all phases of the process? (I'm aware the math here might get out of hand)

I started out thinking that the swapping was a good idea, but when I saw how much it encouraged and rewarded strategy in building the list of schools I changed my mind. It's not a fair process. It's a system that rewards families that have likely already been rewarded by society.

[dllthomas]

> If that's important, shouldn't it apply to all phases of the process?

Doesn't that same reasoning apply to increasing the weight? Maybe it's so important and not more important.

[abalone]

Can you be more specific about the strategies that help with building the list of schools?