Are Teachers Good at Giving School Track Recommendations?

In many school systems, (and) specifically in Germany and The Netherlands, students are obliged to choose between two or more high-school tracks at the end of primary school: one that leads to more demanding university studies, while the others lead to vocational or technical education. This choice is typically influenced by the advice of a teacher and, occasionally, also by the results of an ability test. In some German Bundesländer it is compulsory for the student to choose the track suggested by the teacher.

A wide literature has shown that in educational systems characterized by school tracking the choice of track is crucial for the life of individuals and has highly persistent consequences. It is therefore surprising that there exists no systematic evaluation of the capacity of teachers (or tests) to give correct advice.

The goal of this project is to evaluate how good teachers are at predicting in which track a student would have the best performance and whether ability tests may be better than teachers at this crucial task.