| Melissa Roderick
University of Chicago
Peering into the black box of tracking: Opportunities to learn, classroom contexts, and mathematics achievement
FINAL REPORT:
This research will use data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988 to study the effects of curriculum and ability tracking on the mathematics achievement and engagement of high school students. Most high schools in the United States uses some form of tracking to organize students for instruction. What tracking means to students' curricula, classroom activities, and relationships with teachers and peers, however, varies widely across schools. NELS is the first national survey to include student and teacher reports of the climate and pedagogy used in high school mathematics courses in a large sample of students, teachers, and schools. By analyzing variation in educational experiences across tracks and across schools, this study seeks to test alternative hypotheses for why students in the general track have poorer mathematics achievement. We will identify how much of track differences in mathematics achievement as they develop throughout students' high school careers can be attributed to differences in: course selection; opportunities to learn and the quality and level of instruction within courses; or to contextual influences on identity formation. Analysis will control for student attributes prior to track enrollment and will estimate the extent to which track effects vary by the characteristics of students and the schools they attend. This research will employ Hierarchical Linear Modeling to estimate growth curves and the effect of track characteristics controlling for school contextual effects. The goal of this research is to establish an understanding of how the current organizational arrangements of high schools influence the distribution of opportunity and achievement in mathematics as a means of informing current policy debates.
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