The alternative to the lottery is to give the school a catchment area. This means they draw students only from that area, instead of from the larger school district.
Is the school good because the students are good? It stands to reason that if you get smarter, more motivated students, they will do better and then the school looks like a good school. Perhaps if they only had the students in the catchment area, they would do a lot worse and look no different from any other school serving that population.
In my town, we do have some charter schools who have done well and who are committed to the neighborhoods they are in. They have been opening more and more schools and trying to maintain the quality of education and the benefit of the education. They’re putting their money where their mouths are. If it’s the system, then the kids in the neighborhood will do better. If it’s the students, then nothing will be different.
I think it’s worth trying to win the lottery. Even if the school isn’t actually better, you will be with more motivated students, and that makes a lot of difference. Of course, if the school is actually better, then you are even better off.
In my town we have catchment area schools, lottery schools and competitive schools. The latter two are open to anyone in the city. This is a city with a very large population living in poverty. However, the top two high schools send nearly all their kids to college. They are college prep public schools. They are competitive. If they didn’t exist, I think that half the mid to upper income families with high school age kids would have left the city.