The Effects of Free Secondary School Track Choice: A Disaggregated Synthetic Control Approach

Aderonke Osikominu (), Gregor Pfeifer and Kristina Strohmaier ()
Additional contact information
Aderonke Osikominu: University of Hohenheim
Kristina Strohmaier: University of Tuebingen

No 14033, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We exploit a recent state-level reform in Germany that granted parents the right to decide on the highest secondary school track suitable for their child, changing the purpose of the primary teacher's recommendation from mandatory to informational. Applying a disaggre-gated synthetic control approach to administrative district-level data, we find that transition rates to the higher school tracks increased substantially, with stronger responses among children from richer districts. Simultaneously, grade repetition in the first grades of second-ary school increased dramatically, suggesting that parents choose school tracks also to align with their own aspirations – resulting in greater misallocation of students.

Keywords: school tracking; student performance; synthetic control method; treatment effect distributions; treatment effect heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C46 I21 I28 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14033.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effects of Free Secondary School Track Choice: A Disaggregated Synthetic Control Approach (2021)
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:iza:izadps:dp14033

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().