Early Learning and the Social Composition of Schools
Geoffrey Borman
About the research
Award
NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship
Award Year
2002
Institution
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Primary Discipline
Sociology
The primary purpose of this project is twofold: (1) to determine the extent to which the social composition (e.g., concentration of poverty or racial/ethnic makeup) of a school affects an early elementary student’s achievement outcomes, above and beyond the effect of his or her individual poverty status; and, (2) to identify the underlying processes that help us understand how the social composition of the school impacts the academic performance of individual children.
From both a theoretical and methodological perspective, these research problems are most appropriately understood as hierarchical, with a micro (student) and macro (classroom or school) component. The primary statistical tool that I will use, the multilevel model, explicitly takes into account this hierarchical structure. I propose to begin by using the multilevel model to measure the extent to which social composition explains between-school differences in achievement. Further, I will assess how the magnitude of the compositional effect compares to the individual effect of poverty. In a series of additional analyses, I will model variables representing three theories—the collective socialization, epidemic, and institutional models—that help us understand how compositional effects influence children’s outcomes.
About Geoffrey Borman
Geoffrey D. Borman, Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 1997) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Fueled by the application of quantitative methods to educational research, his main substantive interests are anchored in inquiry focused on the social organization of schools, review of research, and the evaluation and development of policies and programs for improving the educational outcomes of historically underserved children. More specifically, these three substantive areas are linked to Dr. Borman’s primary methodological interests: multilevel modeling, meta-analysis, and experimental and quasi-experimental design.