IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crm/wpaper/25159.html

School choice, school switching, and optimal assignment

Author

Listed:
  • Hessel Oosterbeek
  • Tina Rozsos
  • Bas van der Klaauw

Abstract

Close to 20% of secondary school students in Amsterdam - and elsewhere - transfer between secondary schools at some point, even when initially placed in their most-preferred school. School switching is costly for the students involved and disrupts the learning environment of their former and new classmates. Using data from the Amsterdam secondary-school match linked to administrative registers, we show that switching can be predicted by hard-to-rationalize initial school choices. Over 60% of switchers can be correctly identified at the admission stage. Simulations indicate that encouraging predicted switchers to adjust their preference ranking of schools could reduce the switching rate by almost 15%.

Suggested Citation

  • Hessel Oosterbeek & Tina Rozsos & Bas van der Klaauw, 2025. "School choice, school switching, and optimal assignment," RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series 25159, ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin).
    • Handle: RePEc:crm:wpaper:25159
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/25159.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • C35 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crm:wpaper:25159. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Moritz Lubczyk or Matthew Nibloe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmucluk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.