Fairness versus Efficiency in Public School Assignments

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.12188
• Author: UMUT ÖZEK
• Date: 01 February 2017
• Published date: 01 February 2017

FAIRNESS VERSUS EFFICIENCY IN PUBLIC SCHOOL ASSIGNMENTS

UMUT ¨

OZEK

American Institutes for Research

Abstract

A critical element in the sustainability of any public policy is the fair

treatment of similar individuals. This paper introduces a new dimen-

sion of merit to evaluate public school assignment mechanisms based

on this notion of equity. I show that there exists no assignment mecha-

nism that is both constrained-efficient and fair. The findings also reveal

that all of the prominent assignment mechanisms discussed in the lit-

erature fail to satisfy this fairness criterion.

1. Introduction

Public school choice programs continue to be common, yet highly controversial, tools

in education policy to improve student achievement in urban school districts. Such

programs extend the traditional Tiebout choice, under which residential choice im-

plies school choice, by providing various alternatives to the household’s neighborhood

school. These alternatives include other traditional public schools (as in open en-

rollment programs such as intra-district and inter-district choice, which make out-of-

boundary traditional public schools available to nonresidents) or untraditional publicly

funded schools (charter and magnet schools).1

Absent frictions, public school choice programs allow parents to send their children

to any public school within the boundaries of a region that contains, but is not lim-

ited to, the household’s neighborhood. In this scenario, public school assignments are

trivial; each student is assigned to the public school of her choice within these bound-

aries. However, in practice, parents are typically limited in their public school choices by

nonboundary constraints, especially public school capacities, requiring admission pro-

cedures with established rules to determine the assignments at over-demanded schools.

1As of 2011, 25 states in the United States had passed a legislation mandating school districts to imple-

ment intra-district school choice, and 22 states had mandated the school districts within their bound-

aries to participate in the inter-district choice program of the state (Education Commission of the

States, 2011). During the last decade, the number of students enrolled in public charter schools more

than quadrupled from 300,000 to 1.6 million, 3.3% of all public school students nationwide. As of 2010,

40 states and the District of Columbia had enacted a charter school law (Aud et al. 2012).

Umut ¨

Ozek, American Institutes for Research, 1000 Thomas Jefferson Street, N.W., Washington, DC

20007 (uozek@air.org).

I would like to thank Richard Romano, David Figlio, Lawrence Kenny, David Sappington, Jonathan

Hamilton, Steven Slutsky,Damon Clark, and seminar participants at the University of Florida for helpful

comments and suggestions.

Received October 12, 2012; Accepted July 11, 2015.

C2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Journal of Public Economic Theory, 19 (1), 2017, pp. 234–243.

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