Country-case studies examining the relation between curricular tracking (ability sorting) in secondary education and civic and political engagement (CPE) have led to mixed findings. This calls for a comparative approach. Thus far, as a result of the available data, comparative studies examining the effect of curricular tracking on civic engagement have been cross-sectional in nature. In this paper, we introduce a longitudinal approach by drawing from two cross-sectional surveys with identical CPE measures for the same birth cohort before and after tracking (CIVED 1999, ISSP 2004 and EVS 2008). We examine the relation between the duration of curricular tracking and the development of CPE between the age of 14 and young adulthood in 25 countries. The results show that a longer tracked curriculum is negatively related to the development of civic and political engagement, particularly at the lower part of the distribution. Moreover, we find that the negative relation between length of the tracked curriculum and CPE is mediated by enrolment rates for higher education. This result suggests that tracking does not directly negatively affect civic and political engagement, but does so because it is associated with reduced participation in higher education.

中文翻译：

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课程跟踪和公民和政治参与：比较不同教育系统中的青少年和年轻人

对中等教育课程跟踪（能力排序）与公民和政治参与 (CPE) 之间关系的国别案例研究得出了不同的结果。这就需要一种比较的方法。迄今为止，根据现有数据，检查课程跟踪对公民参与的影响的比较研究本质上是横断面的。在本文中，我们引入了纵向方法，从两个横断面调查中提取，在跟踪之前和之后对同一出生队列进行了相同的 CPE 测量（CIVED 1999、ISSP 2004 和 EVS 2008）。我们研究了 25 个国家的 14 岁和青年时期课程跟踪持续时间与 CPE 发展之间的关系。结果表明，较长的跟踪课程与公民和政治参与的发展呈负相关，尤其是在分布的较低部分。此外，我们发现跟踪课程长度与 CPE 之间的负相关是由高等教育入学率调节的。这一结果表明，跟踪不会直接对公民和政治参与产生负面影响，但之所以会产生负面影响，是因为它与高等教育参与率降低有关。