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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.

Educational systems that separate students into curriculum tracks later may place less emphasis on socioeconomic family background and allow individuals' personal skills and interests more time to manifest. We tested whether postponing tracking from age 11 to 16 results in stronger genetic prediction of education across a population, exploiting the natural experiment of the Finnish comprehensive school reform between 1972 and 1977. The association between polygenic score of education and achieved education strengthened after the reform by one-third among men and those from low-educated families. We observed no evidence for reform effect among women or those from high-educated families. The first cohort experiencing the new system had the strongest increases. From the perspective of genetic prediction, the school reform promoted equality of opportunity and optimal allocation of human capital. The results also suggest that turbulent circumstances, including puberty or ongoing restructuring of institutional practices, may strengthen genetic associations in education.

Citizenship education aims to compensate for the lack of a stimulating political home environment. However, not all scholars are convinced that schools are great equalizers, as citizenship education might reinforce rather than reduce socioeconomic inequalities. This paper investigates whether citizenship education compensates, reproduces, or accelerates inequality in students’ internal political efficacy (IPE) and how this relationship differs across educational tracks. IPE is considered a key political attitude that predicts political participation and taps into self-confidence in a political setting. This political attitude is especially interesting considering the stigmatizing effects of educational tracks. We study the effect of citizenship education among senior high school students in Flanders. We examine three kinds of citizenship education: civic learning experiences, an open classroom climate, and active student participation at school. We conduct three-way interactions in multilevel models to study the moderating effect of these types of citizenship education at school on the relationship between a political home environment and IPE across educational tracks. We show compensating effects for the three citizenship education types. However, looking across educational tracks, there is a clearer compensation in the academic track compared to the technical and vocational tracks. Our findings indicate that citizenship education contributes to a democratic society where all citizens feel confident participating in the political arena. Still, technical and vocational tracked students not only receive less citizenship education, but the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities in feelings of IPE when receiving higher amounts is also less articulated than in the academic track.

In this article, we analyze how the existence of alternative pathways to higher education, which implies different selection mechanisms, shapes social inequality in educational attainment. We focus on the Russian educational system, in which higher education can be accessed from academic and vocational tracks, but the rules of admission to higher education from these tracks are different. Access through the academic track is highly selective due to obligatory high-stakes testing, which determines secondary-school graduates’ eligibility to pursue higher education. The vocational track is generally less selective with regard to student intake and provides less restrictive access to higher education. We argue that this system has nuanced implications for social inequality. On one hand, transitions from vocational education to higher education can promote greater social mobility by offering an affordable and low-risk gateway to higher education for children from less-advantaged families. On the other hand, more-advantaged families might use the vocational track to higher education if their children face a high risk of failure in the more selective academic track. We test this conjecture and provide supporting evidence using data from the longitudinal survey Trajectories in Education and Careers.

Recent research suggests that the relative age of a student within a grade has a causal effect on educational achievement, and that this effect fades with the duration of schooling. In this study, we estimate the causal relative-age effect on track choice in Austria, a country where students are first tracked in grade 5 (at the age of 10 years), and again in grade 9. We find a strong positive relative-age effect on track choice in grades 5-8. The age effect persists beyond grade 8 for students from less-favorable socioeconomic backgrounds and students in urban areas.

This research explores the changes in educational inequality between school transitions in China. Due to the mechanism of differentiated selection, life course, and heterogeneous early education, the impact of students’ socioeconomic status and cultural background on their educational opportunities is expected to decline in secondary and higher education, while the impact of the grade of school is assumed to rise. A multinomial logistic regression was carried out to test this hypothesis based on the 2008 Chinese General Social Survey. Results show that the early stages see the most severe inequality of educational attainment; as students move up to higher stages of education, the contribution of SES and cultural background is largely replaced by the grade of school. Therefore, more emphasis should be put on educational inequality at an early stage.

Research on immigrants' educational disadvantages documents substantial immigrant—native achievement gaps in standardized student assessments. Exploiting data from the German PIRLS extension, we find that second-generation immigrants also receive worse grades and teacher recommendations for secondary school tracks than natives, which cannot be explained by differences in student achievement tests and general intelligence. Second-generation immigrants' less favorable socioeconomic background largely accounts for this additional disadvantage, suggesting that immigrants are disproportionately affected by prevailing social inequalities at the transition to secondary school. We additionally show that differences in track attendance account for a substantial part of the immigrant—native wage gap in Germany.

Educational tracking affects both the trajectories and the composition of peers that students meet in school. This study compares the effect of significant others on students’ educational aspirations within two transition regimes: the more comprehensive Swedish system and the more stratified Dutch. Separating between doxic and habituated aspirations, I hypothesize that (1) aspirations among students in disadvantaged schools will be lower in the Netherlands than in Sweden; (2) the higher educational aspirations of girls and children of immigrants will disappear when significant others are controlled for; and (3) the positive effect of significant others is more marked among Swedish students than among Dutch due to greater student heterogeneity. The data comes from 3202 students in schools with low average grades in Sweden and the Netherlands. Results were in line with the hypothesis with one important exception. There was a marked difference in habituated aspirations but no difference in doxic aspirations between the Dutch and Swedish students. In conclusion, the findings suggest a) that early tracking systems creates a disconnect between students’ hopes and what they perceive as likely outcomes, and b) that the phenomenon termed “immigrant optimism” and “ethnic capital” reflects unequal access to social capital.

臺灣地區原住民比率最高、社經背景最低落，且基測成績最差的臺東縣，原漢族群與家庭背景對高中職入學考試基測成績，以及是否升學與所升上的教育分流有何影響？非常值得探討，然而，研究者未見國內有關這方面的研究。本研究根據「臺東縣教育長期資料庫」所蒐集的2006 年高中職入學考試基測成績與升學結果資料做分析。研究結果顯示：雖然整體升學率已接近100%，不同出身背景者幾乎都能升學而没多大不同，可是漢人升上出路最佳的公立高中比率仍比原住民高出許多，原住民學生升上出路最差的私立高職比率仍較漢人高出許多。原住民在入學考試雖享有加分三分之一的優待，不過由於原始成績低於漢人許多，加分後的成績與所升上教育分流的出路仍比漢人差了不少；而原住民成績比漢人低許多，重要原因是家庭背景較差。 Taitung, a county known for having the highest percentage of Aboriginal population and lowest SES (Socioeconomic status) of residents in Taiwan, is ranked the lowest in the Basic Competence Test. What effects do Aboriginal and Han ethnic groups and their respective family backgrounds have on their Basic Competence Test scores, their enrollment to upper secondary education, and educational tracking? According to our literature review, no study has yet addressed this question. The data of this study were obtained from the “Taitung Educational Panel Survey.” By compiling the Basic Competence Test scores and enrollment information collected in 2006, the above question was examined. The main findings are as follows. Although the overall student enrollment of upper secondary education was approximately 100 percent regardless of student background, the enrollment rate of Han students in public senior high schools (which has been deemed the optimal educational tracking measure for future socioeconomic status attainment) was far higher than that of Aboriginal students. The enrollment rate of Aboriginal students in private vocational schools (deemed the least optimal educational tracking measure for future status attainment) was far higher than that of Han students. Despite the fact that Aboriginal students were granted an additional one-third on their original scores on the Basic Competence Test, Aboriginal student scores were still much lower than Han students; and so was the future status attainment following their educational tracking. It was found that their disadvantageous family background is the main factor explaining their lower academic performance.

臺灣地區原住民比率最高、社經背景最低落，且基測成績最差的臺東縣，原漢族群與家庭背景對高中職入學考試基測成績，以及是否升學與所升上的教育分流有何影響？非常值得探討，然而，研究者未見國內有關這方面的研究。本研究根據「臺東縣教育長期資料庫」所蒐集的2006年高中職入學考試基測成績與升學結果資料做分析。研究結果顯示：雖然整體升學率已接近100%，不同出身背景者幾乎都能升學而没多大不同，可是漢人升上出路最佳的公立高中比率仍比原住民高出許多，原住民學生升上出路最差的私立高職比率仍較漢人高出許多。原住民在入學考試雖享有加分三分之一的優待，不過由於原始成績低於漢人許多，加分後的成績與所升上教育分流的出路仍比漢人差了不少；而原住民成績比漢人低許多，重要原因是家庭背景較差。