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We show how social multipliers reinforce preexisting socioeconomic disadvantages of children due to the German early tracking system. We estimate social multipliers from classroom-ability-social-interactions effects for 9th-grade students through a Conditional Quasi-Maximum Likelihood approach: we identify the average effect of classmates' performance from the reduced form and treat a student's potential (self-)selection in a classroom as an omitted variables problem. We find that a 1-point decrease in peer average performance in science leads to a 7.2-points decrease in classroom performance for the vocational training (Hauptschule) students at the lower end of the ability distribution but only to a 2.4-points decrease for the university-path (Gymnasium) students standing at the top of the performance ladder. Moreover, we conclude that a native student's performance in the classroom is more important – either in a beneficial or detrimental way – than an immigrant's performance.
