The researcher at the Milenio MIPP Institute and one of the creators of the sophisticated computer algorithm that was used to implement the School Admission System in Chile, Juan Escobar, together with the academic from the University of Chile, Leonel Huerta, analyzed the impact of reservations minority views on segregation and efficiency in school choice programs.
Many student placement programs use centralized procedures. Based on the Gale-Shapley deferred acceptance algorithm, these procedures result in allocation processes that academics and policymakers consider successful.
However, understanding of the impact that affirmative action policies have on segregation and different market outcomes is quite limited, even though segregation in schools is a key social and economic problem.
Segregation in schools affects both learning outcomes and social attitudes and, as policy debates recognize, is determined in part by the algorithm used to admit students.
Chile gradually began its centralized school choice system in 2016, which is called the “School Admission System” (SAE). Before 2016, the system operated as a decentralized voucher market in which schools selected applicants based on non-transparent criteria. According to legislators and politicians who pushed for the reform, the decentralized nature of the system was to blame for the high levels of segregation in Chilean schools.
One of the changes that was introduced with the SAE was that the Chilean system reserves 15% of seats in each school for socially disadvantaged minority students and assigns students to schools using the deferred acceptance algorithm.
Despite that, the centralized system has had a modest impact on segregation in Chilean schools. Furthermore, the paper “Centralized Admission Systems and school segregation: Evidence from a national reform” by Macarena Kutscher, Shanjukta Nath, and Sergio Urzúa, which investigates whether the adoption of centralized school admission systems can alter socioeconomic diversity within schools, shows that the impact of the SAE on segregation is low.
Naturally, this leads to the question about the tools policymakers face when designing algorithms to reduce segregation.
In this context, the researcher at the Milenio MIPP Institute and one of the creators of the sophisticated computational algorithm that was used to implement the SAE, Juan Escobar, together with the academic from the University of Chile, Leonel Huerta, decided to explore whether reservations for minorities, which guarantee a number of seats for minority students, effectively reduce segregation in schools.
They named the research “Segregation and affirmative action in school choice.”
Read the full note in Miradas MIPP here: https://www.mipp.cl/miradas/2023/09/25/segregacion-y-accion-afirmativa-en-la-eleccion-de-escuela/
MIPP Chile 2024