High-Stakes Testing and Educational Careers: Exploiting the Differences in Cutoffs Between Test Recommendations in The Netherlands

In many countries, high-stakes tests play an important role in allocating students to prestigious tracks and schools in secondary education or to prestigious programs and colleges in tertiary education. It is not clear what happens if the cutoff points in these tests are systematically lowered. Will this affect subsequent educational careers? This paper exploits the market entrance of two new suppliers of high-stakes tests in primary education in the Netherlands. In the year of introduction, the new tests still needed to be calibrated appropriately: the cutoff points for track recommendations for secondary education were systematically too low for some students (and too high for others). We use a unique, high-quality dataset and a within-schools–across-cohorts design to model the short-and medium-term educational outcomes for the students affected by these new tests. We find evidence of short-term effects: teachers’ advice is more often adjusted for the treated group, and initial track placement is higher. However, these effects fade out in the medium term.