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In the transition from Dutch primary to secondary education, two indicators are used to place students in the right track: primary school teachers' track recommendations (TTR) and standardized achievement tests (SATs) at the end of primary school. Which indicator is better for placing students is a long-standing issue among educational researchers and professionals. Since 2015, the SAT is administered after the TTR has been given; previously, SAT was administered first. In the current study, it was investigated to what extent TTR and a commonly used SAT predict students' educational attainment after three years of secondary education for multiple cohorts before and after 2015. The results were compared for educational tracks and for different socio-economic status (SES) groups, using multiple samples approaching population data. For all educational tracks and SES groups the results show that TTR is a better predictor of educational attainment than SAT. Furthermore, large differential effects for SES were found. The change of administrative sequence in 2015 had no effect on the overall predictive accuracy: TTR remained the better predictor. The results give new insights into the predictive value of both TTR and SAT before and after the change in administration sequence.

In the Netherlands, track recommendations are used to allocate students to a track in secondary education. If the results of a standardized attainment test in the final grade of primary education indicate that students can go to a higher track, primary schools are required to reconsider the track recommendation. Currently, five tests are used for this purpose. This study explored whether and to what extent the percentage of reconsiderations differs per test, using population data of four recent cohorts. Large differences were found in the percentages of reconsiderations, both between tests and between cohorts. Of the three most used tests, the Centrale Eindtoets had the highest percentage of reconsiderations in 2020-2021, followed by the IEP Eindtoets. ROUTE 8 had the lowest percentage of reconsiderations in 2020-2021. To gain more insight into the comparability of these tests, more scientific research on the predictive and content validity of these tests is recommended.