So I claimed in my message to the CCMS executive board (which I just forwarded to you) that we had a well developed research plan. I think that that was more or less correct, but it may be a good idea to spell it out. At least I certainly would benefit from such a meta-activity…
So our goal is to figure out a good mechanism for school district assignments. We have decided that mechanism design is a good candidate as a method. We have found some research papers which study similar issues from this perspective. We think that there are possible venues for improving on these earlier works and perhaps even eventually collaborating with their respective authors.
Here is a skeleton of a plan, at least for myself:
1. Do the Reading!
1A. Understand what they have done
1B. Understand what assumptions they are making
1C. Figure out which of these assumptions we would like to modify and what other kinds of changes we might wish to make
2. Decide whether we want to work within a theoretical or practical framework: Do we want to look over the math mainly or do we still wish to involve and relate our work to Oakland + Claremont / Pomona districts?
3. If you are ok with the idea of requesting funds for students, figure out what to do with these students in a limited amount of time (they will have only eight weeks)
3A. readings for them,
3B. what is absolutely necessary for them to know to start working,
3C. whether there are smaller digestible bite-size chunks of the problem
OK, I pledge that I will do 1A by the time we meet in October… BTW did you know that October is the month of the exploding head syndrome? And that such a medical condition really exists?
