CAREER: From Assignment to Evaluation: The Design of School Choice Systems

National Bureau Of Economic Research Inc, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

In the last decade, there has been a great deal of activity and excitement in market design, a small but growing field of economics which studies how to design mechanisms and institutions through which individuals interact and also attempts to improve existing systems, recommends new mechanisms, and reports on their performance. In particular, there has been progress in the study of student assignment systems, such as those found in choice plans in many public school districts in the United States and around the world. The initial literature on these systems built on an earlier mechanism design and matching literature, while recent work has matured to a point where economists have been able to advise a handful of school districts on their allocation procedures. To date, hundreds of thousands of students have been assigned to schools via new assignment mechanisms inspired by this work. Moreover, based on the persistence of these new mechanisms as well as summary measures of performance, the initial experience with these mechanisms has been promising. This proposal outlines a long-term agenda of research and education on the design, implementation, and study of student assignment systems and school choice. The proposal consists of three parts. First, I will study important unresolved theoretical questions motivated by challenges in applying mechanisms in practice. These include issues related to dynamics, efficiency in stochastic mechanisms, and the overall desirability of school choice. Second, experiences and partnerships with school districts in Boston, Chicago, and New York provide me the opportunity to study how participants respond to the incentives of particular admissions rules. This, in turn, will allow me to rigorously measure the distributional consequences of choice-based reforms. For example, using variation generated by policy changes from new mechanisms, I intend to study the nature and consequences of gaming among participants. Do participants react to systems which create perverse incentives on participants to reveal their true preferences? Do some sophisticated applicants gain from knowledge of particular admissions rules to the detriment of other unsophisticated applicants? Another issue I will study is learning and information acquisition about mechanisms. How do applicants learn about good schools and how to best utilize choice options? Answers to empirical questions about mechanisms in the field will ultimately lead to the design of better systems and to a deeper understanding of the interaction between mechanisms and their practical implementation. Third, I will use my knowledge of student assignment procedures to exploit quasi-experimental variation to study long-standing questions on education production and school performance. For instance, I intend to study the causal effects of selective education, the impacts of peers and student grouping, and the influence of various school models on student achievement. Which schools are best for which kids? Do children benefit from being in schools with schools with peers of similar ability? Does this stratification hurt lower performing students? Studies using the rich new datasets developed in this proposal will enhance public policy debates and the economics of education. This research naturally supports my education and outreach activities. I will develop a new graduate course in market design, provide school districts assistance with their assignment algorithms, and bring together practitioners and researchers through an annual meeting on school assignment. The expansion of knowledge on student assignment represents an important development and opportunity for market design within the discipline of economics. Experiences implementing mechanisms in the field lead to new theoretical issues, policy questions, and empirical analyses. The results and lessons derived from design exercises will foster the creation of a practically-oriented design literature to complement the existing theoretical literature on mechanism design. Connections to school districts offer a unique opportunity to study long-standing empirical questions on education in innovative ways with new data sets and empirical approaches. This project has a direct public benefit: it will help school districts design better student assignment mechanisms. It will also enhance policy makers' understanding of factors that impact student achievement. Because of the importance of input from practitioners, a central component of the proposal is a conference hosted at the NBER involving academics and practitioners, intended to catalyze and disseminate scholarship related to best practices in student assignment. I will also pursue a number of mentoring activities at the undergraduate and graduate level.