An agent-based model of school tracking, accountability, and segregation

Extant research on the effect of education system characteristics on school socio-economic segregation does not consider education as a complex system. This paper’s contribution lies in using agent-based modelling to simulate the effect of the interaction between families’ strategies for school selection and two education system characteristics: tracking – a system where students of different academic abilities are separated in different schools – and school accountability – the public availability of information on school quality. The model shows that school tracking and accountability tend to at the same time attenuate and increase school socio-economic segregation, but overall both policies tend to exacerbate segregation by eliciting competition for the best schools. The policy implications are: (i) tracking has a stronger exacerbating effect on segregation than accountability, (ii) the two polices interact to create compounding effects and (iii) by reducing residential segregation between families the segregating effect on schools of the two policies diminishes dramatically.