TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hanushek,Eric A.
AU  - Woessmann,Ludger
TI  - Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences-in-Differences Evidence across Countries
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11124
PY  - 2005
Y2  - February 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11124
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11124.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Eric A. Hanushek
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6010
Tel: 650/736-0942
Fax: 650/723-1687
E-Mail: hanushek@stanford.edu

Ludger Woessmann
University of Munich
Ifo Institute for Economic Research and CESifo
Poschingerstr. 5
81679 Munich, Germany
E-Mail: woessmann@ifo.de
AB  - 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.
ER  -