Does early tracking affect learning inequalities? Revisiting difference-in-differences modeling strategies with international assessments

Large-scale Assessments in Education

An IERI – International Educational Research Institute Journal

Table 6 Countries with tracking at age 15 classified as untracked

	Inequality measure
	Overall inequalities		Family background inequalities
	SD		F-gap
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Constant	58.17***	65.24***	66.31***	88.77***
Tracking	6.50*	− 15.15	20.42***	− 34.11
Inequality measure at t = 1	0.486***	0.387**	0.603***	0.336*
Tracking∙Inequality measure at t = 1		0.328		0.657**
N countries	24	24	24	24
R²	0.368	0.400	0.558	0.657

Under the heading SD we report results relative to the effects of tracking on the country standard deviation. Under the heading F-gap we report results relative to the effects of tracking on the difference between tertiary educated parents with the largest number of books and no tertiary educated parents with the lowest number of books: F-gap = [ln(500) × \(c_{1}\) + \(c_{2}\)] − ln(5) × \(c_{1}\), where \(c_{1}\) and \(c_{2}\) are the coefficients of the family background variables: ln(books) and tertiary education
Columns (1) and (3) refer to the model with no interaction; columns (2) and (4) to models with interaction between the tracking indicator and inequality at t = 1
*0.05 < p value < 0.10, **0.01 < p value < 0.05, ***p value < 0.01