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School Choice

Paper Session

Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PST)

Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Union Square 12
Hosted By: Econometric Society
  • Chair: Jeremy T. Fox, Rice University

School Assignment by Match Quality

Atila Abdulkadiroglu
,
Duke University
Umut Mert Dur
,
North Carolina State University
Aram Grigoryan
,
University of California-San Diego

Abstract

Parental school choice is a central education reform tool. Yet various policy objectives cannot be addressed in the standard model that guides the design of centralized admissions in school choice programs. We introduce student-school specific match quality and formalize such policy objectives as maximizing aggregate match quality subject to stability constraints. We characterize subsets of stable assignments through admissible schools and maximize match quality within these subsets with a minimum-cost flow solution. In comparison to the widely used Deferred Acceptance with a random tie-breaking algorithm, match quality optimization in New York City public school assignment reduces average traveling distance for high school students by about 1 mile, increases estimated Math and English standardized test scores for middle school applicants by about 3-5% of a standard deviation, and assigns around 10 percentage points more applicants to one of their two most preferred schools.

A Dynamic Framework of School Choice: Effects of Middle Schools on High School Choice

Dong Woo Hahm
,
University of Southern California
Minseon Park
,
Yale University

Abstract

We study the dynamic relationship of school choices across different educational stages. Using quasi-random middle school assignments in New York City, we show that middle schools with top quality-review scores cause students to be matched to higher-achievement high schools, in both level and value-added. A decomposition exercise using a sequential model of middle and high school choices shows that such effects of middle schools mainly operate by affecting students’ high school applications rather than high school priorities, accounting for nearly 80% of the total effect. By mainly changing students’ high school applications, abolishing eligibility restrictions of top quality-review-scored middle schools can not only increase the average quality of attended high schools but also narrow the racial and income disparities in it. Such efficiency and equity gains increase by up to 50% when combined with similar high school admissions reforms.

Measuring the Welfare Gains from Cardinal-Preference Mechanisms in School Choice

Hulya Eraslan
,
Rice University
Jeremy T. Fox
,
Rice University
YingHua He
,
Rice University
Yakym Pirozhenko
,
Rice University

Abstract

We compare cardinal-preference and ordinal-preference mechanisms for assignment problems such as school choice, with a focus on a variant of the pseudomarket mechanism of Hylland and Zeckhauser (1979) as well as an envy-free mechanism related to Nguyen, Peivandi, and Vohra (2015). We introduce and theoretically analyze a variant of the pseudomarket mechanism that has an equilibrium selection rule. We also introduce a computer algorithm to compute the implied stochastic assignment. The envy-free mechanism is a linear program and hence simpler to compute. We estimate cardinal preferences over schools using data on student submissions of rank-ordered lists of schools in Seattle. Using these estimated preferences, we measure the welfare gains from using the pseudomarket and envy-free mechanisms instead of the ordinally efficient probabilistic serial mechanism. We find that the pseudomarket captures 19% of the possible gains over the ordinal mechanism using a utilitarian benchmark. The envy-free mechanism captures 58% of the possible gains over the ordinal mechanism.
JEL Classifications
  • I2 - Education and Research Institutions