them even farther behind in skills and future labor market outcomes. The efficiency gains can be further reduced by the inflexibility of switching tracks when an initial assignment error is made. This is particularly common if the track assignment is determined by the performance in a onetime standard examination.

Overall, the existing literature seems to be consistent in finding that tracking perpetuates the learning gap. However, cautions are highlighted on the promises of the reforms of postponing tracking or simply boosting one track over the other. Early results show that it is probably not the tracking per se but the inflexibility of students’ movement across tracks that matters more. In addition, the reforms may not bear fruit in terms of higher education attainment and better labor market outcomes without expanding tertiary education opportunities and higher demand for advanced level of skills that comes with economic transformation.

- Tracking tends to perpetuate inequality in general. The cross-country examination by Brunello and Checchi (2007) suggests that tracking, by and large, reinforces the effect of family background on the student’s performance. It thus increases inequality and reduces intergenerational mobility for most measures of educational attainment and early labor market outcomes. Similarly, Schutz, Ursprung, and Woessmann (2008) compile a large set of 54 nations and test whether the link between students’ math scores and books in the home, which is strongly positive, becomes weaker in countries that begin tracking at a later age. They find evidence favoring this idea. Hanushek and Woessmann (2006) compare the differences in outcome between primary and secondary schools across tracked and nontracked systems. The results suggest that there is a tendency for early tracking to reduce mean performance and find that early tracking is associated with significant increases in inequality in secondary schools relative to primary schools.

- There is suggestive evidence that shifting the age when tracking begins is associated with a change in student performance. Van Elk, van der Steeg, and Webbink (2009) study the effect of differentiated starting age geographically in the Netherlands at which the students are placed into different types of schools. Their results suggest that when students are tracked at an earlier age, their average probability of participating in postsecondary education falls as a result. Studies on specific European countries include Bauer and Riphahn (2006) on the correlation between parents’ and children’s education across Swiss cantons, which set the different grades at which tracking begins. The paper finds that tracking that starts at a later grade is associated with increased probability that children enroll in the secondary track that is considered “university bound” regardless of the parental education level.

- Effort in boosting general education at the cost of vocational education yielded mixed results. Malamud and Pop-Eleches (2010) look into the relative benefits of general education and vocational training during Romania’s transition to a market economy. They examine a 1973 educational reform that shifted a large proportion of students from vocational training to general education. Based on census and household survey data, it is found that men affected by the policy are significantly less likely to work in manual or craft-related occupations but have similar levels of labor market participation and earnings compared to their counterparts unaffected by the policy. The same authors also find that although students from poor households, rural areas, and with less educated parents were significantly more likely to finish an academic track and become eligible to apply for

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