Tracking pupils may reduce social segregation in residential neighborhoods and schools

Perhaps the most common critique of tracking in schools is that it reinforces pre-existing inequalities by segregating pupils from privileged backgrounds away from the rest of the student body. However, in their new research Gianni De Fraja and Francisco Martinez-Mora find evidence that tracking may actually reduce neighborhood segregation, as it provides parents with an incentive to keep their children in schools in disadvantaged areas if it means their children will be placed into a top track.