| Anna Chmielewski
Stanford University
Tracking and Achievement Inequality in Cross-National Perspective
Tracking (separation of students into "high ability" and "low ability" classes or schools) has been considered an important mechanism for creating unequal educational outcomes in both American and comparative
educational research, but few studies have compared tracking across the widely disparate tracking regimes of the United States and the rest of the developed world using data that captures individual-level track placement across all countries. My dissertation will use PISA 2003 data to compare the role of tracking as a dimension of educational inequality in the U.S. and other OECD countries. I will first use a multinomial logit model to predict selection into tracks in each country based on student background characteristics and then use propensity score matching to correct for selection bias into tracks. I will estimate hierarchical linear models for each country predicting the effects of track placement on math achievement and college expectations. Finally, I will add controls to this model for observable classroom and instructional treatments and peer demographic composition and level of achievement to ascertain the degree to which these factors mediate the relationship between track placement and achievement and aspirational outcomes.
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