Early selection of students into different schools based by ability increases educational
inequalities. It also tends to reduce average performance. These are the central
conclusions of new research by Ludger Woessmann and Eric Hanushek, published in the
March 2006 issue of the Economic Journal.
Many countries worry about the relative merits of a selective versus comprehensive school
system. The resulting choices are surprisingly different: countries such as Austria, Germany
and Hungary put students in different ability schools as early as age 10. In contrast, others
including Canada, Sweden, the UK and the United States nowadays essentially keep their
entire lower secondary school system comprehensive.
Parents and politicians alike would like to know whether putting students on different school
tracks has consequences for the equity and efficiency of educational outcomes. This
research provides evidence from international experiences across countries that early
tracking increases educational inequality. While less clear, there is also a tendency for early
tracking to reduce mean performance. So there does not appear to be an equity-efficiency
trade-off.
Macro issues of institutional structure are extraordinarily difficult to evaluate within
individual countries, largely because the variations in structure are almost certainly related
to the characteristics of the families and schools choosing to follow an anomalous pattern.
To address these empirical complexities, the researchers use the variation in both the
institutional structure of between-school tracking and student performance across countries
to sort out the impacts of tracking.
In essence, they identify the effects of tracking by comparing differences in outcome
between primary and secondary school across tracked and non-tracked systems. That is,
they compare the level and distribution of performance of younger students (before tracking
is introduced in any country) with those of older students (after some countries have started
tracking) across countries with and without tracking, effectively controlling for any crosscountry
variation that existed already in primary school. The existence of several large
international assessment programs permits a consistent evaluation of student performance
across a wide range of countries.
The analysis provides reasonably strong support for the ‘disequalising’ effects of early
tracking. Variation in performance, measured in a variety of ways, tends to increase across
levels of schooling when a country employs early tracking. Although the evidence on the
level of performance is more mixed, there is very little evidence that there are efficiency
gains associated with this increased inequality.
From a policy perspective, it seems incumbent on those advocating early tracking in
schools to identify the potential gains. This research suggests that countries lose in terms
of the distribution of outcomes, and possibly also in levels of outcomes, by pursuing such
policies.
ENDS
Notes for editors: ‘Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality?
Differences-in-differences Evidence across Countries ’ by Eric Hanushek and Ludger
Woessmann is published in the March 2006 issue of the Economic Journal.
Woessmann is at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich;
Hanushek is at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
For further information: contact Ludger Woessmann on +49-89-9224-1699 (email:
woessmann@ifo.de; website: http:// www.cesifo.de/link/woessmann-l-e.htm); or RES Media
Consultant Romesh Vaitilingam on 0117-983-9770 or 07768-661095 (email:
romesh@compuserve.com).