Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences-in-Differences Evidence Across Countries

  • Early tracking increases educational inequality.
  • While less clear, there is also a tendency for early tracking to reduce mean performance.
  • Variation in performance , measured in a variety of ways, tends to increase across levels of schooling when a country employs early tracking.
  • Both high and low achievers lose from tracking. The net impact comes from the differential impacts on different parts of the distribution.