School Choice: A Mechanism Design Approach

By Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Tayfun Sönmez. 2003

1,789 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A central issue in school choice is the design of a student assignment mechanism. Education literature provides guidance for the design of such mechanisms but does not offer specific mechanisms. The flaws in the existing school choice plans result in appeals by unsatisfied parents. We formulate the school choice problem as a mechanism design problem and analyze some of the existing school choice plans including those in Boston, Columbus, Minneapolis, and Seattle. We show that these existing plans have serious shortcomings, and offer two alternative mechanisms each of which may provide a practical solution to some critical school choice issues.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Education, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fc7694dbdf2f441810e4c054f39280c77c93f66a

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In Management Science and Operations Research

Citations in the corpus

A general equivalence theorem for allocation of indivisible objects (2014, methodology): “We use the full form of TTC as described by Abdulkadiro˘ glu and Sönmez [4] (see also [10]).”
Changing the Boston School Choice Mechanism: Strategy-proofness as Equal Access (2006, positive): “For each school, consider the students who have listed it as their first choice and assign seats of the school to these students one at a time following their priority order until either there are no seats left or there is no student left who has listed it as his first choice.(6)”
School Admissions Reform in Chicago and England: Comparing Mechanisms by Their Vulnerability to Manipulation. NBER Working Paper No. 16783. (2011, neutral): “John Coldron was extremely helpful in providing details about admissions reforms in England.”
Breaking Ties: Regression Discontinuity Design Meets Market Design (2019, background): “This DA class includes student-proposing DA, serial dictatorship, the immediate acceptance (Boston) mechanism (Abdulkadiroğlu and Sönmez (2003),Ergin and Sönmez (2006)), China’s parallel mechanisms (Chen and Kesten, 2017), England’s first-preference-first mechanisms (Pathak and Sönmez, 2013),…”
The Welfare Effects of Coordinated Assignment: Evidence from the New York City High School Match (2017, background): “(24)Balinski and Sönmez (1999) and Abdulkadiroğlu and Sönmez (2003) provide an alternative equity rationale for stability.”
The Long-Term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston (2021, neutral): “During our study period, the city used the immediate acceptance (or “Boston”) mechanism to determine assignments (Abdulkadiro˘glu and S¨onmez 2003).”
Neutrosophic Decision Making Model of School Choice (2015, neutral): “[11] A. Abdulkadiroglu, T. Sonmez.”
Accountability and Flexibility in Public Schools: Evidence from Boston's Charters And Pilots (2009, methodology): “Differencing (3) by offer status within risk sets, this becomes”