How Middle School "Fork in the Road" Hinders Equal Educational Opportunity

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Source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932957403 Note: See text for explanationThere’s research contending that, in the US, a child’s postal code is the best predictor of lifetime income and other conditions. Moreover, it is said, a child who moves from an inferior district to another can greatly increase his living standard. It may be extreme to say the same thing about Japan, but there’s some truth in it. Except for the small share of students who take exams for a private or national middle school, 90-92% of children go to the public middle school in their locality. But the best ones tend to be in the big cities. The quality of the middle has an inordinate impact on high school admissions test scores and thus determines the quality of one’s high school. That, in turn, determines the college someone goes to—or even if they go to college—and, consequently, one’s occupation, lifetime earnings, and, to some degree, their marriage prospects.On Some Fronts, Japan Is Superior in Social MobilityThe above result can sound surprising because so much data seems to show Japan offers superior opportunities for social mobility in education. For one thing, Japan ranks first in the world in the share of 25-34-year-olds with a college degree, at 48%.Secondly, Japan ranks sixth among 34 rich countries in an important measure of social mobility: how much an individual can create his own economic advancement regardless of his parents’ status. The chart below shows how much a ninth grader’s international math score (the PISA test) is determined by the socioeconomic and cultural status (SES) of …