Understanding the response to high-stakes incentives in primary education

Maximilian Bach and Mira Fischer

No 20-066, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: This paper studies responses to high-stakes incentives arising from early ability tracking. We use three complementary research designs exploiting differences in school track admission rules at the end of primary school in Germany's early ability tracking system. Our results show that the need to perform well to qualify for a better track raises students' math, reading, listening, and orthography skills in grade 4, the final grade before students are sorted into tracks. Evidence from selfreported behavior suggests that these effects are driven by greater study effort but not parental responses. However, we also observe that stronger incentives decrease student well-being and intrinsic motivation to study.

Keywords: Student Effort; Tracking; Incentives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I28 I29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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 (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/226360/1/174039237X.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Understanding the Response to High-Stakes Incentives in Primary Education (2020)
Working Paper: Understanding the Response to High-Stakes Incentives in Primary Education (2020)
Working Paper: Understanding the response to high-stakes incentives in primary education (2020)
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:zbw:zewdip:20066

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().