A new DemoSoc seminar will take place next week "Does curricular tracking explain SES gaps? an international comparison of the SES achievement gaps from 2000 to 2015"

Presenter: Jorge Cimentada, PhD student at Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Date: 21/11/17

Time: 12.00 - 13.30 h

Place: 40.039 (Roger de LLúria building)

Abstract

The literature on achievement inequality has only recently started studying the evolution of the socio-economic achievement gap in cognitive abilities and it has un- covered a wide variety of results. The main finding comes from research in the United States and it shows that the 90th/10th income achievement gap has been widening by about 40-50% in the last 30 years. Other international comparisons show that there’s important variation among developed countries, but the research on this area is scarce. This paper looks to study whether there are specific patterns in the evolution of the gap in a comparative perspective. I find that there is considerable variation in the way in which the gap is evolving, with the United States and Germany closing at a rapid pace and France widening at a similar rate. I find that this gap is strongly correlated with a country’s overall performance and simulations show that switching to less tracking can help decrease a countries SES gap by about 20%. I also find that tracking and vocational enrollment explain over one third of the evolution of the achievement gap and show that the relationship is conditioned by a strong interaction: low tracking is associated with a small achievement gap, but high levels of tracking coped with high vocational enrollment can also remedy the aversive effects of tracking.