School Admissions Reform in Chicago and England: Comparing Mechanisms by their Vulnerability to Manipulation

Parag Pathak and Tayfun Sönmez

No 784, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics

Abstract: In Fall 2009, officials from Chicago Public Schools changed their assignment mechanism for coveted spots at selective college preparatory high schools midstream. After asking about 14,000 applicants to submit their preferences for schools under one mechanism, the district asked them to re-submit their preferences under a new mechanism. Officials were concerned that "high-scoring kids were being rejected simply because of the order in which they listed their college prep preferences" under the abandoned mechanism. What is somewhat puzzling is that the new mechanism is also manipulable. This paper introduces a method to compare mechanisms based on their vulnerability to manipulation. Under our notion, the old mechanism is more manipulable than the new Chicago mechanism. Indeed, the old Chicago mechanism is at least as manipulable as any other plausible mechanism. A number of similar transitions between mechanisms took place in England after the widely popular Boston mechanism was ruled illegal in 2007. Our approach provides support for these and other recent policy changes involving matching mechanisms.

Keywords: student assignment; Boston mechanism; matching; strategy-proofness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D63 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-gth and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp784.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: School Admissions Reform in Chicago and England: Comparing Mechanisms by Their Vulnerability to Manipulation (2013)
Working Paper: School Admissions Reform in Chicago and England: Comparing Mechanisms by Their Vulnerability to Manipulation (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boc:bocoec:784

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill MA 02467 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().