The (Un)Level Playing Field: How Color-Blind Educational Tracking Leads to Unequal Access

Konferenzbeitrag

Educational tracking seeks to group students by unobserved ability using measures of observable acquired skills. In a model where individuals have differential skills prior to beginning formal education due to differences in early childhood development (e.g. linguistic, cultural, or nutritional disadvantages), we show that color-blind tracking systematically underplaces minorities. As a result, minorities have, in expectation, higher abilities than non-minorities assigned to the same track regardless of track. A counterintuitive empirical implication of the model is that, conditional on tracking score and track, minorities will outperform non-minorities in subsequent testing following tracking. Affirmative action policies seeking to equalize posttracking outcomes share similar flaws to color-blind standards in that the average ability of minorities assigned to the upper track remains higher than for non-minorities.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Beiträge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2015: Ökonomische Entwicklung - Theorie und Politik - Session: Education 3 ; No. C07-V3

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Education and Inequality ; Returns to Education ; Demographic Economics: Public Policy

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Triebs, Thomas ; Morgan, John ; Tumlinson, Justin
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (when): 2015

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/113106
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET