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De-tracking at the margin: how alternative secondary education pathways affect student attainment

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  • Matthewes, Sonke
  • Borgna, Camilla

Abstract

This paper estimates how marginal increases in the flexibility of between-school tracking affect student attainment by exploiting the addition of non-selective ‘comprehensive schools’ and hybrid ‘vocational high schools’ to Germany's tracked school system. These schools opened up alternative pathways to the university-entrance certificate, which traditionally could only be obtained at academic-track schools. We use administrative records to compile a county-level panel of school supply and attainment for 13 cohorts between 1995 and 2007. Cross-sectionally, the supplies of all three school types awarding the university-entrance certificate correlate positively with its attainment. However, for academic-track and comprehensive schools this association is not robust to the inclusion of regional controls, suggesting that it reflects regional differences in educational demand rather than supply-side effects. For vocational high schools, in contrast, we find robust evidence for positive attainment effects not only in cross-sectional and two-way fixed-effects panel regressions, but also in an event-study design that exploits the quasi-random timing of new school openings. Likely reasons for their success are that they lower the (perceived) costs of educational upgrading for late-bloomers, and their hybrid curriculum, which may retain students in general schooling who would otherwise enter vocational training.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthewes, Sonke & Borgna, Camilla, 2025. "De-tracking at the margin: how alternative secondary education pathways affect student attainment," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 126595, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:126595
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    ability tracking; difference-in-differences; educational expansion; event study; regional inequality; school supply;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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