IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvco/2010081.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

School tracking, social segregation and educational opportunity: evidence from Belgium

Author

Listed:
  • HINDRIKS, Jean

    (Université catholique de Louvain, CORE & Department of Economics, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)

  • VERSCHELDE, Marijn

    (SHERPPA, Department of General Economics, Ghent University, B-9000 Gent, Belgium)

  • RAYP, Glenn

    (SHERPPA, Department of General Economics, Ghent University, B-9000 Gent, Belgium)

  • SCHOORS, Koen

    (CERISE, Department of General Economics, Ghent University, B-9000 Gent, Belgium)

Abstract

Educational tracking is a very controversial issue in education. The tracking debate is about the virtues of uniformity and vertical differentiation in the curriculum and teaching. The pro-tracking group claims that curriculum and teaching better aimed at children's varied interest and skills will foster learning efficacy. The anti-tracking group claims that tracking systems are inefficient and unfair because they hinder learning and distribute learning inequitably. In this paper we provide a detailed within-country analysis of a specific educational system with a long history of early educational tracking between schools, namely the Flemish secondary school system in Belgium. This is interesting place to look because it provides a remarkable mix of excellence and inequality. Indeed the Flemish school system is repeatedly one of the best performer in the international harmonized PISA tests in math, science and reading; whereas it produces some of the most unequal distributions of learning between schools and students. Combining evidence from the PISA 2006 data set at the student and school level with recent statistical methods, we show first the dramatic impact of tracking on social segregation; and then, the impact of social segregation on equality of educational opportunity (adequately measured). It is shown that tracking, via social segregation, has a major effect on inequality of opportunity. Children of different economic classes will have different access to knowledge.

Suggested Citation

  • HINDRIKS, Jean & VERSCHELDE, Marijn & RAYP, Glenn & SCHOORS, Koen, 2010. "School tracking, social segregation and educational opportunity: evidence from Belgium," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2010081, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
  • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2010081
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2010.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. de Bartolome, Charles A M, 1990. "Equilibrium and Inefficiency in a Community Model with Peer Group Effects," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(1), pages 110-133, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. School tracking, social segregation and educational opportunity: evidence from Belgium
      by Kevin Denny in Geary Behaviour Centre on 2011-02-23 04:45:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marijn Verschelde & Jean Hindriks & Glenn Rayp & Koen Schoors, 2015. "School Staff Autonomy and Educational Performance: Within‐School‐Type Evidence," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 36, pages 127-155, June.
    2. Arbona, Alexei & Giménez, Víctor & López-Estrada, Sebastián & Prior, Diego, 2022. "Efficiency and quality in Colombian education: An application of the metafrontier Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Damiano, Ettore & Li, Hao & Suen, Wing, 2012. "Competing for talents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(6), pages 2190-2219.
    2. Gilbert, Guy & Picard, Pierre, 1996. "Incentives and optimal size of local jurisdictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 19-41, January.
    3. Alessandro Tampieri, 2016. "Social background effects on school and job opportunities," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 496-510, September.
    4. Giulio Zanella, 2004. "Discrete Choice with Social Interactions and Endogenous Memberships," Department of Economics University of Siena 442, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    5. Stephen L. Ross, 2003. "Ségrégation and Racial Preferences: New Theoretical and Empirical Approaches," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 71-72, pages 97-139.
    6. Fernandez, Raquel, 1997. "Odd versus even: comparative statics in multicommunity models," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 177-192, August.
    7. Ron W Zimmer & Eugenia F Toma, 2000. "Peer effects in private and public schools across countries," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(1), pages 75-92.
    8. Helmuth Cremer & Dario Maldonado, 2013. "Mixed oligopoly in education," Documentos de Trabajo 10500, Universidad del Rosario.
    9. Bezin, Emeline & Moizeau, Fabien, 2017. "Cultural dynamics, social mobility and urban segregation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 173-187.
    10. De Fraja, Gianni & Landeras, Pedro, 2006. "Could do better: The effectiveness of incentives and competition in schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 189-213, January.
    11. Del Rey, Elena, 2004. "Funding schools for greater equity," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 203-224, March.
    12. repec:wil:wileco:2012-08 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Marisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo, 2007. "On the optimal allocation of students when peer effect works: Tracking vs Mixing," Working Papers 07.14, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    14. Rajiv Sethi & Rohini Somanathan, 2004. "Inequality and Segregation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(6), pages 1296-1321, December.
    15. Francisco Martínez Mora, 2003. "Opting-out of Public Education in Urban Economies," Economic Working Papers at Centro de Estudios Andaluces E2003/52, Centro de Estudios Andaluces.
    16. Sáez-Martı´, Maria & Zenou, Yves, 2012. "Cultural transmission and discrimination," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 137-146.
    17. Michele Raitano & Francesco Vona, 2013. "Peer heterogeneity, school tracking and students' performances: evidence from PISA 2006," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(32), pages 4516-4532, November.
    18. John Lynham & Philip R. Neary, 2021. "Tiebout sorting in online communities," Papers 2110.05608, arXiv.org, revised May 2024.
    19. Hubert Kempf & Fabien Moizeau, 2009. "Inequality, Growth, and the Dynamics of Social Segmentation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(4), pages 529-564, August.
    20. Francisco Martínez Mora, 2011. "The peer group effect and the optimality properties of head and income taxes," Working Papers 2011-07, FEDEA.
    21. Borjas, George J., 1998. "To Ghetto or Not to Ghetto: Ethnicity and Residential Segregation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 228-253, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    tracking; ability grouping; educational performance; social segregation; inequality; PISA;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2010081. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alain GILLIS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/coreebe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.