Publication

This paper examines whether the sorting of differently achieving students into differently sized classes results in a regressive or compensatory pattern of class sizes for a sample of national school systems. The authors find substantial compensatory sorting within and especially between schools in many countries, the US being the only country exhibiting regressive between-school sorting. The authors conclude that between-school sorting is more compensatory in systems with ability tracking while within-school sorting is more compensatory when administrators rather than teachers assign students to classrooms.