High school programs learn which students asked for a spot, but not how they ranked them, and then rank those students based on their own criteria. Students submit an application in which they list up to 12 high school programs ranked in order of preference.
The explicit goal of this algorithm is to assign as many students as possible into programs that they rank highly, given constraints due to limited seats available in individual programs and the programs’ admission priorities. 1 The assignment of students to high school programs, except for the specialized high schools where admission is solely based on performance on an entrance test, proceeds through a specially designed “two-sided deferred-acceptance matching algorithm.” 2 The program was first used in New York City in school year 2003-2004 and the main contours of the program remain in use despite the change in administration. In the fall of 2012, those students were choosing from 691 programs in 411 public high schools. Every New York City eighth grader has a chance to apply to any public high school program in the city.
Introduction and BackgroundĮach year, nearly 80,000 middle school students in New York City participate in the lengthy and complex process of applying to a public high school program. To the extent that the mix of students at individual middle schools changes, there may be ripple effects on how students determine their high school preferences, especially when it comes to factors such as the influence of peers. The city’s Department of Education is currently revamping its middle school choice process. Many students in Staten Island and Brooklyn as well as lower-achieving students in the Bronx tend to prefer high schools closer to their homes than the citywide average distance that high-school students travel to school.In contrast, even higher-achieving students in lower performing middle schools often list lower performing high schools as their top choices. Regardless of their own academic performance, students in higher performing middle schools tend to list higher performing high schools.Lower-achieving students’ first-choice schools tend to be lower performing, have more disadvantaged students, and have less selective programs, than the first choice of higher-achieving students.But the prime reason for this matching is students’ own preferences-in fact, the rates of acceptance to students’ top choice high school programs are highest among lower-achieving students applying to those programs. Students who on average are lower achieving (based on their state math test scores) are routinely matched with lower performing high schools (based on the high schools’ graduation rates and Progress Report scores).Conversely, fewer students indicate a preference for less selective high schools than there are seats available.
Among our main findings:Ĭonsiderably more students list the more selective high schools among their top choices than there are seats available in these schools. Factors such as access to information about the process, guidance from school staff, and the influence of their peers about the schools they should attend, appear to play an important role. But our analysis also raises questions that go beyond the matching process, mostly in terms of how students with different academic backgrounds rank their high school preferences. (The city’s specialized high schools such as Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, and LaGuardia are exempt from this procedure-admission to these schools is based solely on the specialized high school test or an audition).īased on our analysis of the high school choice process the algorithm fulfills its task well. The goal of the algorithm is to match as many students as possible-out of the roughly 80,000 who apply to the city’s public high schools each year-with their top choice schools while taking into account the schools’ admission criteria and the availability of seats. A Look at the New York City's Public High School Choice Processįor more than a decade the city’s public school system has used a computer-based algorithm to determine which high school most middle-school students will attend.