Verifiable affirmative action in centralized school admissions

Abstract

Governments increasingly operate centralized, algorithm-run admission clearinghouses that implement affirmative action through reserve systems. To sustain public trust, many such clearinghouses disclose category-specific cutoffs, but cutoffs need not allow participants to verify whether reserved and open seats are correctly assigned. We formulate cutoff-based verifiability as a governance constraint on the clearinghouse: each participant must be able to verify her assigned school and seat type using only her own score and the public cutoffs, under two intuitive verification protocols. In a controlled school choice model with multiple reserve categories, we characterize mechanisms that are individually rational, strategy-proof, and verifiable. The characterization identifies deferred acceptance mechanisms induced by two choice rules. We recommend one rule that assigns reserved seats only when a student cannot secure an open seat on merit, so that every reserved-seat assignment reflects genuine affirmative action. The results explain mechanism choices across China's high school admission systems and provide design guidance for affirmative action systems in Brazil and India.