The Boston Public School Match

摘要

After the publication of "School Choice: A Mechanism Design Approach" by Abdulkadiroglu and Soenmez (2003), a Boston Globe reporter contacted us about the Boston Public Schools (BPS) system for assigning students to schools. The Globe article highlighted the difficulties that Boston's system may give parents in strategizing about applying to schools. Briefly, Boston tries to give students their first-choice school. But a student who fails to get her first choice may find her later choices filled by students who chose them first. So there is a risk in ranking a school first if there is a chance of not being admitted; other schools that would have been possible had they been listed first may also be filled.