Test‐ or judgement‐based school track recommendations: Equal opportunities for students with different socio‐economic backgrounds?

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Background
There are concerns that school track recommendations that are mostly based on teachers’ judgements of students’ performance (‘judgement-based recommendations’) are more biased by students’ SES than school track recommendations that are mostly based on standardized test results (‘test-based recommendations’). A recent policy reform of the Dutch educational system has provided us the unique opportunity to compare the effects of students’ SES on these two types of track recommendations.

Aims
The aim of this study was to examine the differences between test-based and judgement-based recommendations regarding the direct and indirect effect of students’ SES at student level and school level.

Sample
The sample consisted of 8,639 grade 6 students from 105 Dutch primary schools.

Methods
Data were analysed using two-level multilevel mediation models.

Results
Track recommendations were higher for high-SES students. This was mostly due to differences in students’ prior performance. SES also had a small, direct effect on judgement-based, but not on test-based recommendations. The effects were partly situated at school level.

Conclusion
Overall, the results indicated that teachers based their track recommendations mostly on students’ prior performance without being biased by students’ SES.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)193-216
JournalBritish Journal of Educational Psychology
Volume91
Issue number1
Early online date2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

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