Some time ago, Esther Duflo likened market design to plumbing. I think she had in mind construction plumbing, making sure the pipes are all tight. But there's also maintenance (and home repair) plumbing, which involves plugging new leaks. Parag Pathak alerts me to such an issue in New York City's school choice system.
The NY Post has the story:
Parents uncover major glitch in NYC school lottery system By Susan Edelman
"A Manhattan mom discovered an embarrassing glitch in the city Department of Education lottery system used to match students with middle and high schools.
"When NYC students filled out their online applications for 2022-23, each kid automatically received a long string of random numbers from 0 to 9 mixed with lower-case letters from a to f.
"The random numbers are used to determine the order in which students are matched to programs.
"Lottery numbers starting with 0 are most likely to land students in a school at the top of their list – 8th graders can rank up to 12 preferred high schools.
...
"But as one 8th-grader’s mom figured out, if students canceled and re-started their applications – as the DOE permitted – they received a different lottery number each time. The loophole allowed users to potentially game the system by simply re-applying until a favorable lottery number popped up.
"Parent leaders alerted the DOE’s Chief Enrollment Officer, Sarah Kleinhandler, who was unaware of the snafu and promised to look into it. She did.
...
"The DOE said it was able to identify 163 students who received new lottery numbers – less than 1 percent of applicants. They included 121 students out of 71,000 high-school applicants, and 42 students out of 58,000 middle school applicants, a spokesman said.
"Students who received new lottery numbers after restarting their applications will get their first lottery numbers back, a spokeswoman told The Post."
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Speaking of home repairs, here's an earlier post about some self inflicted problems:
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
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