Speaker: Dr. Stephen Raudenbush, Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Sociology, the College, and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies; Chair, Committee on Education; University of Chicago

Friday April 1, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM BJT

Zoom: 998 7073 0834, Passcode: CSCC

Abstract

For most of the 20th century, US high schools used “tracking” to organize instruction and accommodate the heterogeneity of the student body. In the typical comprehensive high school, a vocational track composed mostly of working-class boys focused instruction on skilled trades (e.g., carpentry, electricity, and auto mechanics), while a general track, disproportionately composed of working-class girls, emphasized home economics (e.g., cooking and sewing) and clerical skills. A much smaller academic track, composed mostly of upper-class children, provided college-preparatory instruction, particularly in mathematics. During the latter half of the century, tracking was widely criticized for reproducing social and racial inequality and limiting math skill in the general population. The movement to abolish rigid tracking and to replace it with academically challenging math instruction for all had profound implications, both for the content of instruction and for the composition of the high school classroom. In this talk, I’ll review evidence from Chicago of the early failure of requiring academic math for all students. I’ll then present new evidence suggesting that combining academic algebra for all with expanded instructional time can have substantial long-term effects on the educational attainment of previously students who enter high school with low skills. I contend that this experience, based on strong research designs, supports the contention that expanding academic instruction can reduce inequality. However, in Chicago, this benefit disappeared when math classrooms were excessively heterogeneous in the prior skill of their students. This interpretation supports a commitment to high expectations for the learning of all students combined with careful tailoring of instructional content to the current skill of each student.

Bio

Stephen Raudenbush is the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Sociology, the College and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and at the University of Chicago.

He is interested in statistical models for child and youth development within social settings such as classrooms, schools, and neighborhoods. He is best known for his work developing hierarchical linear models, with broad applications in the design and analysis of longitudinal and multilevel research. He is currently studying the development of literacy and math skills in early childhood with implications for instruction; and methods for assessing school and classroom quality. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences the recipient of the American Educational Research Association award for Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research.