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The present study investigates school context effects on psychosocial characteristics (academic self-concept, peer relations, school satisfaction, and school anxiety) of high-achieving and gifted students. Students who did or did not make an early transition from elementary to secondary schools for high-achieving and gifted students in 5th grade in Berlin, Germany, are compared in their psychosocial development. The sample comprises 155 early-entry students who moved to an academically selective secondary school (Gymnasium) and 3,169 regular students who remained in elementary school until the end of 6th grade. Overall, a complex pattern of psychosocial development emerged for all students, with both positive and negative outcomes being observed. Specifically, the transition into academically selective learning environments seemed to come at some cost for psychosocial development. Propensity score matching analysis isolating the effects of selective school intake and the school context effect itself revealed negative contextual effects of early transition to Gymnasium on academic self-concept and school anxiety; additionally, the positive trend in peer relations observed among regular students was not discernible among early-entry students.
Teacher judgments in terms of grades, proficiency assessments, and recommending placement in ability groups can have important consequences for a child’s future educational path. Whether or not students’ sociodemographic background characteristics are systematically related to teacher judgments has been a controversial topic of discussion. Using data from the TIMSS-Transition Study (N = 3285 fourth graders) administered across 13 German federal states in the 2006–2007 school year and survey data from parents and teachers, we investigated whether or not the average classroom socioeconomic status is reflected in teacher judgments and also examined possible underlying processes. We also probed the role of teachers’ own socioeconomic backgrounds (at the age of 16) in their later susceptibility to differentially judge students from different socioeconomic backgrounds and in differentially composed classrooms. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that, after controlling for differences in achievement (as indicated by standardized tests), teachers’ judgments were associated with the classrooms’ socioeconomic composition, and this finding could not be attributed to the average levels of motivation or behavior in the classroom. Teachers were similarly likely to exhibit such differential judgments regardless of their own socioeconomic background. These findings are discussed in the context of their implications for educational policy.