Thursday, July 2, 2015

The Amsterdam court rules on school choice

Hessel Oosterbeek sends the following update on the school choice court case seeking to allow the exchange of school places that were allocated by a deferred acceptance algorithm with multiple tie breaking.  He writes: 

"Attached is a link to the decision of the judge in Amsterdam. Important considerations for the judge are that: i) trading would harm students who have a higher position on the waiting lists, and ii) allowing trade this year makes the system unusable in the future. The judge also writes that the rules were clear.

Overall it reads that the judge is well informed."

Google Translate allows you to make reasonable sense of the judge's decision in English...
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Here is a blog post, also in Dutch, but Google Translate does a good enough job so that you can see that this is a pretty detailed discussion of various algorithms, strategy-proofness, the judge's decision, etc. It seems that the public discussion is going on at a pretty high level: 
Schoolstrijd in Amsterdam
Waarom ruilen niet mag, ook niet als beide partijen er beter van worden
(School Fight in Amsterdam

Why should not change, even if both parties are better off)