EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences-in-Differences Evidence across Countries

Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann

No 1415, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

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: tracking; streaming; ability grouping; selectivity; comprehensive school system; educational performance; inequality; international student achievement test; TIMSS; PISA; PIRLS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eec, nep-ltv and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1415.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences- in-Differences Evidence Across Countries (2006)
Working Paper: Does educational tracking affect performance and inequality? differences-in-differences evidence across countries (2006)
Working Paper: Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences-in-Differences Evidence across Countries (2005) Downloads
Working Paper: Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences-in-Differences Evidence across Countries (2005) Downloads
Working Paper: Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences-in-Differences Evidence across Countries (2005) Downloads
Working Paper: Does Education Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences-In-Differences Evidence Across Countries (2005) Downloads
Working Paper: Does Education Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences-In-Differences Evidence Across Countries (2005) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1415

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-24
Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1415