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

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.