Publications
Publications
- March–April 2022
- Operations Research
School Choice in Chile
By: Jose Correa, Natalie Epstein, Rafael Epstein, Juan Escobar, Ignacio Rios, Nicolas Aramayo, Bastian Bahamondes, Carlos Bonet, Martin Castillo, Andres Cristi, Boris Epstein and Felipe Subiabre
Abstract
Centralized school admission mechanisms are an attractive way of improving social welfare and fairness in large educational systems. In this paper, we report the design and implementation of the newly established school choice system in Chile, where over 274,000 students applied to more than 6,400 schools. The Chilean system presents unprecedented design challenges that make it unique. First, it is a simultaneous nationwide system, making it one of the largest school choice problems worldwide. Second, the system is used for all school grade levels, from prekindergarten to 12th grade. One of our primary goals is to favor the assignment of siblings to the same school. By adapting the standard notions of stability, we show that a stable assignment may not exist. Hence, we propose a heuristic approach that elicits preferences and breaks ties between students in the same priority group at the family level. In terms of implementation, we adapt the deferred acceptance algorithm as in other systems around the world.
Keywords
Early Childhood Education; Secondary Education; Middle School Education; Family and Family Relationships; Welfare; Chile
Citation
Correa, Jose, Natalie Epstein, Rafael Epstein, Juan Escobar, Ignacio Rios, Nicolas Aramayo, Bastian Bahamondes, Carlos Bonet, Martin Castillo, Andres Cristi, Boris Epstein, and Felipe Subiabre. "School Choice in Chile." Operations Research 70, no. 2 (March–April 2022): 1066–1087.