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Student assessment and grade retention: evidence from a natural experiment

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  • Marlies Kornfeld
  • Carsten Ochsen

Abstract

In several countries, students are tracked into secondary school types. This paper studies whether parents or teachers assess students' potential performance more adequately. We evaluate a reform in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2006. The reform replaced parents' choice about their children's school type by a binding teacher recommendation. The dependent variable is educational attainment measured by grade retention rates. We find that teacher recommendations cause less grade retentions. The effect is mainly driven by students from better situated districts. This finding may capture that with free parental choice, parents select too demanding tracks for their children.

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  • Marlies Kornfeld & Carsten Ochsen, 2017. "Student assessment and grade retention: evidence from a natural experiment," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 127-141, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:edecon:v:25:y:2017:i:2:p:127-141
    DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2016.1199660
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    Cited by:

    1. Lex Borghans & Ron Diris & Wendy Smits & Jannes de Vries, 2019. "The long-run effects of secondary school track assignment," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-29, October.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

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