The paper "School Choice: A Mechanism Design Approach" by Atila Abdulkadiroğlu and Tayfun Sönmez addresses the design of student assignment mechanisms in school choice programs. The authors highlight the flaws in existing plans, which often lead to appeals from dissatisfied parents. They formulate the school choice problem as a mechanism design problem and analyze several real-life plans, including those in Boston, Columbus, Minneapolis, and Seattle. These plans are found to have significant shortcomings, and the authors propose two alternative mechanisms: the Gale-Shapley student optimal stable mechanism and the top trading cycles mechanism. Both mechanisms are strategy-proof, but they differ in their approach to prioritizing students. The Gale-Shapley mechanism completely eliminates justified envy but may not always be Pareto efficient, while the top trading cycles mechanism is Pareto efficient but does not completely eliminate justified envy. The choice between these mechanisms depends on the specific priorities and policy goals of the policymakers. The paper also discusses how these mechanisms can be modified to accommodate controlled choice constraints, which aim to maintain racial and ethnic balance in schools.The paper "School Choice: A Mechanism Design Approach" by Atila Abdulkadiroğlu and Tayfun Sönmez addresses the design of student assignment mechanisms in school choice programs. The authors highlight the flaws in existing plans, which often lead to appeals from dissatisfied parents. They formulate the school choice problem as a mechanism design problem and analyze several real-life plans, including those in Boston, Columbus, Minneapolis, and Seattle. These plans are found to have significant shortcomings, and the authors propose two alternative mechanisms: the Gale-Shapley student optimal stable mechanism and the top trading cycles mechanism. Both mechanisms are strategy-proof, but they differ in their approach to prioritizing students. The Gale-Shapley mechanism completely eliminates justified envy but may not always be Pareto efficient, while the top trading cycles mechanism is Pareto efficient but does not completely eliminate justified envy. The choice between these mechanisms depends on the specific priorities and policy goals of the policymakers. The paper also discusses how these mechanisms can be modified to accommodate controlled choice constraints, which aim to maintain racial and ethnic balance in schools.