Working Paper: NBER ID: w11124
Authors: Eric A. Hanushek; Ludger Woessmann
Abstract: Even though some countries track students into differing-ability schools by age 10, others keep their entire secondary-school system comprehensive. To estimate the effects of such institutional differences in the face of country heterogeneity, we employ an international differences-in-differences approach. We identify tracking effects by comparing differences in outcome between primary and secondary school across tracked and non-tracked systems. Six international student assessments provide eight pairs of achievement contrasts for between 18 and 26 cross-country comparisons. The results suggest that early tracking increases educational inequality. While less clear, there is also a tendency for early tracking to reduce mean performance. Therefore, there does not appear to be any equity-efficiency trade-off.
Keywords: educational tracking; performance; inequality; international assessments
JEL Codes: I2
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| early tracking (Y20) | educational inequality (I24) |
| early tracking (Y20) | mean performance (D29) |
| educational inequality (I24) | national standard deviation of test scores (C46) |
| tracking indicators (C43) | mean performance and inequality measures (D63) |