Project Details
Projekt
How Does Reducing the Intensity of Tracking Affect Student Achievement and Equity? Evidence from German State Reforms
Applicant
Professor Dr. Ludger Wößmann
Subject Area
Statistics and Econometrics
Term
from 2017 to 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 390731346
Tracking, i.e. the sorting of students by ability into groups of learning, potentially has many advantages. Teaching, curriculum, class size, and other school inputs can be tailored to the more homogenous groups such that learning is optimized. For Europe, however, where students are tracked into different types of school, empirical evidence on positive effects of tracking is elusive. Cross-country evidence and evaluations of de-tracking reforms in Scandinavia suggest that tracking hardly affects the average level of student achievement but increases inequality. Germany is a country with early (at age 10) and intensive (3+ school types) tracking with relatively high inequality according to PISA scores. While it has proven to be politically hard to postpone the age of first tracking, seven states: Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Schleswig-Holstein, have implemented reforms between 2006/07 and 2011/12 that reduced the intensity of tracking. These reforms either reduced the number of school tracks available or upgraded the lowest track such that it offers a middle-track school degree. This project aims at identifying the effect of a reduction in the intensity of tracking on the level and equity of student outcomes in German school systems. We exploit the de-tracking reforms of the seven German states in a difference-in-differences approach. For our main analysis, we use two cohorts of the National Education Panel Study (NEPS): starting cohort (SC) 3 (5th grade) and SC 4 (9th grade). By comparing student outcomes when both cohorts are in 9th and 10th grade, the NEPS data provide a unique opportunity to study the competencies of students before and after the reforms. The reform effect is identified by comparing the difference in outcomes of students between SC 4 (pre-reform) and SC 3 (post-reform) in the seven reform states with the respective difference in the nine non-reform states. We will analyze effects on student-achievement scores, attainment of 10th grade, secondary-school degree, and grade repetition, as well as heterogeneous effects by socio-economic background of the student. In deepened analyses, administrative data from the German statistical office and from other achievement tests will be used to test for common trends before the reform implementation. The rich NEPS data allow studying changes in school inputs, peer groups, teaching staff, track choices, and private tutoring as possible channels of reform effects. Finally, the project will investigate school-to-work transitions as longer-run effects of the de-tracking reforms.
DFG Programme
Infrastructure Priority Programmes
Subproject of
SPP 1646:
Education as a Lifelong Process. Analysing Data of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS)
International Connection
USA
