The impact of school tracking on school misconduct: variations by migration background in England, The Netherlands, and Sweden

Abstract

According to the differentiation-polarisation hypothesis, educational tracking will cause a polarisation of students’ school attitudes and behaviours: while students in high tracks will develop pro-school attitudes and behaviours, students in low tracks come to reject school. This hypothesis may be too crude, as the effect of tracking on school misconduct could vary across students. Based on the literature on the immigrant aspiration-achievement paradox and the oppositional culture hypothesis, I argue that the tracking effect will be different for students with a migration background. Using two-wave panel data from three educational systems with different types of tracking (i.e. England, the Netherlands, and Sweden), I find some support for the differentiation-polarisation hypothesis among students from the native majority, yet effect sizes are small. In line with the literature on the immigrant aspiration-achievement paradox, no support for the differentiation-polarisation hypothesis is found among students with a migration background. There are no statistically significant differences in these patterns across the three different educational systems.