Effortless or less effort? Effects of tracks on students’ engagement

Background It is found that assigning students to a lower track during secondary education negatively affects their academic performance. As an explanation, it is often mentioned that an anti‐school culture in lower tracks undermines students’ effort and involvement. Aims This study assessed whether going to a lower track affects student engagement. For if an anti‐school culture is to blame for limiting lower track students’ performance, lower track assignment should reduce engagement. Sample A sample of a longitudinal cohort study during secondary education in Flanders (northern Belgium) was used to describe development in engagement with n  = 5,417 students in 46 schools. Four tracks were investigated across four school years. Method Two main methodological challenges were present in this study, different student intake in each track and many students changing from a higher to lower track over time. Accordingly, we used inverse probability treatment weights with marginal structural mean models to account for different student intake and track changes. A comparison was made per pair of tracks that are hierarchically consecutive by matching students who were comparable across these tracks. Accordingly, there were three pairwise comparisons. Results It was never found that being continuously in lower track negatively affects engagement. Only for one pairwise comparison, there was evidence that students who changed from the higher to lower track had lower engagement. Conclusions We rejected the hypothesis that lower tracks negatively affect student engagement. This makes the anti‐school culture as an explanation for lower track assignment negatively affecting academic performance implausible.