Incentives from Curriculum Tracking: Cross-national and UK Evidence

Curriculum tracking creates incentives before its start, and we should expect scores in tested subjects to be higher at that point. I find evidence from both UK and international data for sizable incentive effects. Incentive effects are important from a methodological perspective because they lead to downward bias in value-added estimates of the later age effect of tracking on achievement. They also invalidate placebo tests that work by regressing pre-tracking scores on tracking policies.