Model Of School Choice Research Articles

Student-optimal interdistrict school choice: District-based versus school-based admissions

Hafalir et al. (2022) introduce a model of interdistrict school choice. We show that any district's admission rule satisfying their assumptions is uniquely rationalized by a collection of schools' choice functions satisfying substitutability and acceptance. We then establish that all students weakly prefer the outcome of the cumulative offer process (COP) under the school-based admissions to the outcome under the district-based admissions. This has the implication that if students prefer the interdistrict outcome for the district-based admissions to the intradistrict outcome, then all students are weakly better off under the school-based admissions compared to either of these outcomes. Therefore, for student-optimal interdistrict school choice the introduction of district admission rules hurts students and it suffices to endow schools with usual choice priorities (if students' welfare is more important than districts' policy goals) and to (de)centralize district admissions by letting schools choose.

Schools as Solutions, Students as Problems: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Institutional Scripts in High School Websites

Purpose: In this study, we used critical discourse analysis to examine what school websites convey about the expected roles of educators and students. Research Design: We analyzed 13 high school websites from a mid-sized urban district that has implemented several market-based reforms and has a centralized school choice model. We employed the concept of scripts from institutional theory to analyze what messages these websites communicate about the roles of different educational actors, how these messages relate to existing societal power dynamics, and how they relate to the school model or school demographics. Findings: For students and educators, the sites expressed that students had an important problem, while the school and educators were offered as the solution. This common framework manifested in four distinct patterns, which we describe as the savior, cultivation, assimilation, and marketplace scripts. Implications: By critically examining school websites and other semiotic materials, leaders and other stakeholders can work to “root out” potentially harmful assumptions and narratives and envision alternatives that offer empowerment and transformation.

A content analysis study exploring the marketing messages communicated to prospective female law school and MBA students

American law schools (JD) and Master of Business (MBA) programmes have made strides to recruit female students over the last two decades. As these schools begin to see an equal number of female and male students applying to their programmes, will these graduate programmes continue to market to prospective female students? This paper aims to understand how American JD and MBA programmes market to prospective female graduate students through the graduate programme admission webpages. To understand gendered marketing messages for JD and MBA graduate programmes, the researchers provide a review of the literature regarding the female, graduate school-choice model, perceived influence of the graduate admissions webpage and gendered marketing education messages. Next, using a content analysis study, the researchers examine 25 American JD and MBA programmes for frequency and type of gendered, graduate, school-choice marketing messages. The researchers offer conclusions, implications and ideas for education stakeholders.

Educational equity in China: The experience of school choice reform in Shanghai

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on educational equity in China using the experience of school choice reform in Shanghai. The education authority in Shanghai has launched a host of policy measures to address “school choice fever” (zexiao re) where parents compete to enrol their children in a top-performing school. The policy initiative has been enacted through three strategies that collectively seek to make admission into elite public and minban (people-managed) schools more difficult. However, the policy measure has not dislodged the fundamental societal perception of a good school as one that delivers high test scores. Furthermore, the policy change has paradoxically reinforced the existing inequalities between schools and families. The developments in Shanghai point to the mediating and influential role of parental choice in equity policy against a backdrop of neoliberal ideas and practices. The Shanghai example underscores how a school choice model, despite its best intention, may not succeed in ensuring educational equity for students because of parental intervention and counter-measures to education policy.

Sectarian Competition and the Market Provision of Human Capital

We study the role of denominational competition in the expansion of higher education in the nineteenth-century United States. We document that nearly all colleges established in this period were affiliated with a Christian denomination. Empirical analysis reveals a robust positive relationship between the denominational fragmentation of the county and the number of colleges established. We take several steps to rule out competing explanations and also highlight the causal channel by utilizing two historical case studies. We conclude by estimating a model of school choice and showing that students exhibited strong preferences to attend same-denominational colleges in terms of willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-travel. Therefore, we argue that religious diversity softened the extent of tuition competition between institutions and precipitated an “excess” entry of schools.

Centralized School choice with unequal outside options

We study how market design choices exacerbate or mitigate pre-existing inequalities among participants. We introduce outside options in a well-known school choice model, and show that students always prefer manipulable over strategy-proof mechanisms if and only if they have an outside option. We test for the proposed relationship between outside options and manipulability in a setting where we can identify students’ outside options and observe applications under two mechanisms. Consistent with theory, students with an outside option are more likely to list popular, highly-rated schools under the Boston mechanism, and this gap disappears after switching to a Deferred Acceptance mechanism.

When Information Is Not Enough: School Choice, Segregation, and the Elusive Notion of Fit

Background: School choice models assume that parents and children have varied educational preferences and that catering to those preferences will result in superior educational experiences for all. Yet, we still know relatively little about how parents identify the best school “fit” for their children and families. This question is particularly important in the context of gentrifying urban districts, where school choice often serves to broaden and intensify school segregation at precisely the moment in which racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic school integration could be a real possibility. Objective: The purpose of this study was to better understand how parents determined the best school fit for their children within a competitive system of public school choice. Setting: The study was conducted in a diverse school district in Brooklyn, New York, in which families were required to rank their preferred middle schools and schools were required to rank interested students. This competitive choice model has the potential to match students and schools by educational fit when top choices align, but can also lead to greater academic stratification and racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic segregation. Participants and Research Design: Twenty-six parents from a range of social, economic, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and geographic locations and identities were interviewed over a 15-month period before, during, and after applying to middle schools for their children. The study’s longitudinal design captured parents’ shifting priorities, perceptions of school options, and notions of fit across time. Findings: Study participants’ school preferences shifted through time and were often constructed collectively. Parents sought out and accessed information about their options but, faced with too many uncertainties, also turned to others for guidance and assurance. Race, ethnicity, and class often informed parents’ perceptions of schools, but not uniformly. Notions of fit varied both within and across groups, and at times parents with similar backgrounds and stated educational priorities arrived at disparate school preferences based largely on perceptions constructed within their social networks. Conclusion/Recommendations: These findings suggest that offering families expanded access to and better quality information about their school options will do little to reduce the segregating effects of choice without also ensuring that schools are organized to address the diverse needs of students and families. Seeking to make all schools inclusive and pedagogically responsive to diverse learners will decrease some of the market efficiencies school choice has promised to deliver, but may offer an even greater social good by advancing the goals of integrated and equitable schooling.

Interdistrict school choice: A theory of student assignment

Interdistrict school choice programs—where a student can be assigned to a school outside of her district—are widespread in the US. We introduce a model of interdistrict school choice and present mechanisms that produce stable assignments. We consider four categories of policy goals on assignments and identify when the mechanisms can achieve them. By introducing a novel framework of interdistrict school choice, we provide a new avenue of research in market design.

School Choice and Satisfaction of Low Income and High Income Families: Nested Logit Model Application

The purpose of the study is to determine socioeconomic factors affecting low income and high income families’ choice for a public school or a private school, to investigate their state of satisfaction with the school their children are attending and to determine the factors affecting their state of being satisfied or dissatisfied with the school. To this end, the “Life Satisfaction Survey” B micro data set issued by the Turkish Statistical Institute for the year 2018 was used. The scope of the study consists of the data set of 1,939 households in the school choice model and 2,021 households in the school satisfaction analysis. In the analysis of the data, a two-level Nested Logit model was used in the school choice stage and three-level Nested Logit model was used in the school satisfaction stage. As a result of the school choice analysis, the number of people who bring income to the household, the household head’s marital status, education level and age and household size variables were found to be influential on school choice. As a result of the satisfaction analysis, it was determined that the variables of the quality and number of educational materials in the school, the general approach of the school administration, the attitude of teachers towards students and the number of students in the classroom are the predictors of the satisfaction/dissatisfaction with a public or a private school.

Improving efficiency in school choice under partial priorities

We provide a school choice model where the student priority orders for schools are allowed not to be total. We introduce a class of algorithms, each of which derives a student optimal stable matching once we have an initial stable matching, when the priorities are represented by partial orders. Since a method to derive a stable matching exists when the priorities are partial orders, we can use it to derive a student optimal stable matching. Moreover, we show that any student optimal stable matchings that Pareto dominate the starting stable one are obtained via an algorithm within this class. For the problem of improving efficiency by allowing some priorities to be violated, the algorithms can also be applied, with a weaker assumption on the violations than in the previous study. Finally, we suggest some specific rules of priorities that can be introduced by weakening the requirement of total ordering.

Determinants of school choice and their relation to success to the institution: a comparative study between public and private schools in Bangladesh

PurposeThis paper aims to identify the determinants of school choice and factors that define the success of a school as perceived by the parents and then compare “Public” and “Private” schools with respect to the explored criteria to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the institutions.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on 1,121 quantitative data collected through survey questionnaire from the parents living in urban areas of Bangladesh. The school choice model was developed and validated by applying structural equation modeling.FindingsThis paper offers a statistically significant, robust and reliable five-dimensional 23-item school choice model that includes both school characteristics and preferred outcomes as perceived by the parents. Characteristic-wise comparisons in terms of characteristics revealed that public schools are superior to private institutions in fulfilling several choice criteria such as parents–teacher relationships, performance of the teachers, offerings of special programs, safety assurance in the campus and in having bigger campus with playground. On the other hand, private schools dominate in providing better educational environment, arranging training to the teachers, ensuring satisfactory library services and delivering information effectively to the parents. Among outcome determinants, government schools are well ahead in creating self-discipline, morality and good work habits among students. Private schools are superior in developing critical thinking skill of the kids.Originality/valueThere is a gap of comprehensive empirical study on school choice in South Asia region that includes both school characteristics and outcomes. Therefore, this paper contributes significantly to the relevant literature.

The Distributional Consequences of Public School Choice

School choice systems aspire to delink residential location and school assignments by allowing children to apply to schools outside of their neighborhood. However, choice programs also affect incentives to live in certain neighborhoods, and this feedback may undermine the goals of choice. We investigate this possibility by developing a model of public school and residential choice. School choice narrows the range between the highest and lowest quality schools compared to neighborhood assignment rules, and these changes in school quality are capitalized into equilibrium housing prices. This compressed distribution generates an ends-against-the-middle trade-off with school choice compared to neighborhood assignment. Paradoxically, even when choice results in improvement in the lowest-performing schools, the lowest type residents need not benefit. (JEL H75, I21, I28, R23, R31)

Stable Mechanisms in Controlled School Choice

We consider a controlled school choice model where students are divided into several types such as socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged. The priority for a school is dependent on the type distribution of the assignment. Our model is a generalization of several models in previous studies such as those in which the priorities are based on type quotas and/or reserves. We consider the case where the priority for each school is represented by a weak order and introduce a stable and group strategy-proof mechanism. Moreover, if the priority order for each school is restricted to be a strict order, then the mechanism is also a student optimal stable one. We generalize the model allowing that the priority orders for some schools are not weak, but partial. In this case, a stable mechanism is also introduced.

Do school buses make school choice work?

While school choice has been well studied, there is little existing research exploring the role of transportation, in general, and school buses, in particular, to school choice decisions. We examine the effect of school buses on school choice decisions using data on kindergarten students and their eligibility for transportation assistance in New York City public schools in 2017. Using both conditional logit school choice models and regression discontinuity designs, we provide both descriptive and credibly causal evidence on the impact of school proximity, bus eligibility, and their interaction on school choice decisions. Our results indicate that proximity and buses both matter. Specifically, while distance significantly deters choice, school bus eligibility increases the likelihood of choosing a school by 1.4–4 percentage points (or 12-30 percent). Compared to a high-quality school, we find that bus eligibility has twice as large an impact on reducing the negative distance effect in the 0.5 to 1 mile range from school (27 versus 12 percent). These results will be useful for policy makers looking to leverage school transportation policy to improve school choice decisions, and ultimately student outcomes.

A Note on 'Resolving Conflicting Preferences in School Choice: The 'Boston Mechanism' Reconsidered'

This note corrects a result of Abdulkadiroglu et al. (2011). Assuming incomplete information, common ordinal preferences, and no school priorities in the school choice model, Abdulkadiroglu et al. (2011) prove that naive students benefit from the presence of sophisticated students. They state in their paper and formally prove in their online appendix that, if they turn to assuming complete information and strict priorities as in the standard school choice model, naive students will never benefit from the presence of sophisticated students. We show that this result is actually wrong.

Revealed Preference Analysis of School Choice Models

Preferences for schools are important determinants of equitable access to high-quality education, effects of expanded choice on school improvement, and school choice mechanism design. Standard methods for estimating consumer preferences are not applicable in education markets because students do not always get their first-choice school. This review describes recently developed methods for using rich data from a school choice mechanism to estimate student preferences. Our objectives are to present a unifying framework for these methods and to help applied researchers decide which techniques to use. After laying out methodological issues, we provide an overview of empirical results obtained using these models and discuss some open questions.

Experiments on centralized school choice and college admissions: a survey

The paper surveys the experimental literature on centralized matching markets, covering school choice and college admissions models. In the school choice model, one side of the market (schools) is not strategic, and rules (priorities) guide the acceptance decisions. The model covers applications such as school choice programs, centralized university admissions in many countries, and the centralized assignment of teachers to schools. In the college admissions model, both sides of the market are strategic. It applies to college and university admissions in countries where universities can select students, and centralized labor markets such as the assignment of doctors to hospitals. The survey discusses, among other things, the comparison of various centralized mechanisms, the optimality of participants’ strategies, learning by applicants and their behavioral biases, as well as the role of communication, information, and advice. The main experimental findings considered in the survey concern truth-telling and strategic manipulations by the agents, as well as the stability and efficiency of the matching outcome.

School choice with asymmetric information: Priority design and the curse of acceptance

We generalize standard school choice models to allow for interdependent preferences and differentially informed students. We show that, in general, the commonly used deferred acceptance mechanism is no longer strategy‐proof, the outcome is not stable, and may make less informed students worse off. We attribute these results to a curse of acceptance. However, we also show that if priorities are designed appropriately, positive results are recovered: equilibrium strategies are simple, the outcome is stable, and less informed students are protected from the curse of acceptance. Our results have implications for the current debate over priority design in school choice.

The Impact of Eliminating Secondary School Fees: Evidence from Tanzania

In January 2016, Tanzania implemented a fee-free secondary school reform. Using variation in district and cohort exposure to the reform, we employ a difference-indifferences strategy to estimate the short-term impacts of the reform. Despite a relatively small drop in user costs, the reform substantially increased enrolment into secondary education. While these enrolment effects were predominantly driven by an increase in public school enrolment, there was also a delayed positive effect on private school enrolment. Districts most exposed to the reform experienced a significant drop in exam scores relative to less-exposed districts, which cannot be explained by academic abilities of new students. These findings are in line with a theoretical school choice model, where fee elimination loosens enrolment constraints, and increased enrolment harms the quality of public education.

Peer Preferences, School Competition, and the Effects of Public School Choice

This paper develops a new economic model of public school choice. The key innovation is to model competition between schools in an environment in which parents have peer preferences. The analysis yields three main findings. First, peer preferences dampen schools’ incentives to exert effort in response to competitive pressure. Second, when peer preferences are sufficiently strong, choice can reduce social welfare. This is because choice is costly to exercise but aggregate peer quality is fixed. Third, given strong peer preferences, choice can reduce school quality in more affluent neighborhoods. We conclude that peer preferences weaken the case for choice. (JEL H73, H75, I21, I28, R23)