Background: Ethnic educational inequality is present in almost all Western societies. One possible explanation for the persisting disadvantages of children from immigrant family backgrounds is discrimination. Individual ethnic discrimination has been reported in the form of ethnic bias in school teachers' evaluations and recommendations. Children…

In Germany, students are streamed at age ten into an academic or nonacademic track. We demonstrate that the randomly allocated disadvantage of being born just before as opposed to just after the cutoff date for school entry leads to substantially different schooling experiences. Relatively young students are initially only two-thirds as likely to…