Providing all children equal access to essential services, such as primary education, has been set as a priority in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)’ agenda during the last two decades. Yet the Global Education Monitoring report in 2016 reveals that wide disparities between the rich and the poor persist in access to education of high quality. This study uses the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) to examine the equality of opportunity in access to basic education of high quality. By using enrollment and admission data from a case study in a large school district in the US in 2015/2016, this research evaluates the capacity of the HOI, in order to reveal disparities in access to school opportunities and examines how much of this inequality is explained by families’ pre-determined circumstances. The way of analyzing equality is by disaggregating applications’ data into circumstance groups, according to gender, geography, race/ethnicity, and other criteria. To capture the contribution of each circumstance to inequality of opportunity, the Shapley decomposition method is used. Findings show that the HOI is capable of systematically monitoring and examining existing admission policies and identifying inequality problems. Furthermore, the analysis of the contribution of each circumstance group can reveal admission criteria that have the potential to harm the educational opportunities for children. This assessment should provide valuable insights into the capability of the indicators to reveal where policy intervention is necessary and supply points of view on how policy can be improved.

Choosing a specialty school involves huge challenges for families. This research aims to understand the behavioral process that leads families to choose among various specialty school programs. Discrete choice models, based on revealed preferences data from middle school applications in a large school district in Florida, are estimated using both, the top and all-ranked alternatives. This study returns insights into geographic settings, theme specialties and socioeconomic characteristics of applicants, schools and their relationships. Distance from home, the school's academic quality, the school's theme specialty, and the high percentage of applicant's own race are found to be the strongest factors related to the decision to apply.

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This thesis would not have been possible without your guidance, expertise, unconditional and continuous support, and feedback on my research. Thank you also for the freedom and trust you offered me, all of which have shaped my work and beyond. I am equally indebted to you, Jonathan, for acting as my daily supervisor. Thank you for your huge knowledge about choice models, for countless hours of online meetings, for reading my numerous drafts, for your immense patience, constant encouragement, critical comments, and constructive discussions, and for your happiness and enthusiasm for my research. I was more than one time lost and ready to quit, but after talking to you, I found my way back.I take this opportunity to acknowledge all the people and organizations for their valuable contributions to my research. My sincere acknowledgment and gratitude go to the Ministry of Sciences, Technology, and Innovation (a.k.a. Colciencias) from Colombia, which provided me with the opportunity to do this Ph.D. To Universidad Distrital in Colombia, for facilitating me to further my knowledge and experiences abroad. And to the School District of Hillsborough County which provided useful data and information for this research.I appreciate having been surrounded by so many amazing people in Enschede, who became my extended family. Thanks to my Iranian officemates Sara, Adish, Azar, and Razieh, who advised me during the initial stages. My special appreciation goes to Simba,