School Tracking and Development of Cognitive Skills

By Sari Pekkala Kerr, Tuomas Pekkarinen, Roope Uusitalo. Journal of Labor Economics, 2013

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We evaluate the effects of the school system on mathematical, verbal, and logical reasoning skills using data from the Finnish comprehensive school reform that abolished the two-track school system. We use a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the gradual implementation across the country. Cognitive skills are measured using test scores from the Finnish Army Basic Skills Test. The reform had small positive effects on verbal test scores but no effect on the mean performance in the arithmetic or logical reasoning tests. However, the reform significantly improved the scores of the students whose parents had less than a high school education.

Subfields: Education, Information Systems and Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/515d0b4c6ff41f6da90e4de78650d24e02d5e2c5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

  1. Thijs Bol
  2. H. G. van de Werfhorst
  3. Jacqueline Witschge
  4. J. Dronkers

In Sociology and Political Science

  1. Thijs Bol
  2. H. G. van de Werfhorst
  3. Jacqueline Witschge
  4. J. Dronkers
  5. Thomas A. DiPrete

Citations in the corpus