Teacher Redistribution in Public Schools

Sunday, October 27, 2024, 12:10 -- 12:40

The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act (2009) (RTE) of the Government of India prescribes teacher-student ratios for state-run schools. One method advocated by the Act to achieve its goals is the redeployment of teachers from surplus to deficit schools. We consider a model where teachers can either remain in their initially assigned schools or be transferred to a deficit school in their acceptable set. Transfers cannot turn a surplus school into a deficit school and a deficit school cannot be made a surplus school. The planner's objective is specified in terms of the post-transfer deficit vector that can be achieved. We formulate the problem as a network-flow problem. We show that there exists a transfer policy that generates a post-transfer deficit vector that Lorenz dominates all achievable post- transfer deficit vectors. We also show that the Lorenz-dominant post-transfer deficit vector can be achieved as the outcome of a strategy-proof mechanism.

Joint work with Debasis Mishra, Soumendu Sarkar, Jay Sethuraman and Sonal Yadav