Activities and Interests
Borman's main research interests revolve around social stratification and the ways in which educational policies and practices can help address and overcome inequality. His primary methodological interests include the synthesis of research evidence (or meta-analysis), the design of quasi-experimental and experimental studies of educational innovations, and the specification of school-effects models.
Borman's scholarship has contributed to understanding how federal education programs have reduced the persistent achievement gaps in American society. His 2001 book, Title I: Compensatory Education at the Crossroads (Borman, Stringfield, & Slavin, 2001), discussed the history, student achievement effects, and future of the federal government's largest investment in elementary and secondary education: Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (most recently reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002). His article "National Efforts to Bring Reform to Scale in High-Poverty Schools: Outcomes and Implications", traced the history and academic effects of America's investments in elementary and secondary education over the period 1965-2001 (Borman, 2005).
His work has demonstrated how randomized controlled trials (RCTs) can be applied to studying the large-scale effects of educational policies and programs implemented on a widespread basis in field settings. Over the past ten years, Borman has led or co-directed twelve major randomized controlled trials, which have included randomization and delivery of educational interventions at the student, classroom, school, and district levels. One notable example is his recent RCT, "Final Reading Outcomes of the National Randomized Field Trial of Success for All" (Borman, Slavin, Cheung, Chamberlain, Madden, & Chambers, 2007), which estimated the effects of a popular nationally disseminated reading program for young children from high-poverty schools. When asked by Education Week reporter Deb Viadero about the study, the director of the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education, Grover Whitehurst, was quoted as saying: "It's a sophisticated study that uses everything the evaluation field has come to recognize as high quality" (May 11, 2005, p. 2, 15).
Borman has been appointed as a methodological expert to advise many national research and development projects, including the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented and three of the nation’s regional educational laboratories funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. He serves on the editorial boards of six academic journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, Research Synthesis Methods, and Elementary School Journal. He is a Principal Standing Panel Member of the Education Systems and Broad Reform Research Review Panel of the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences and was named to the 15-member Urban Education Research Task Force established to advise the U.S. Department of Education on issues affecting urban education. His research has been funded by a variety of organizations, including the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Institute of Education Sciences, American Educational Research Association Grants Program, Spencer Foundation, Open Society Institute, and Smith-Richardson Foundation, among others.
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