Geoffrey D. Borman
Geoffrey D. Borman is an American quantitative methodologist and policy analyst. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1997 and is currently the Alice Wiley Snell Endowed Professor at Arizona State University, director of the Arizona State University Education Sciences Graduate Program, and editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
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, 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, 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.
His work has advanced the evidence-based policy movement in the field of education and has demonstrated how randomized controlled trials can be applied to studying the large-scale effects of educational policies and programs implemented on a widespread basis in "real-world" field settings. Borman has directed multiple federally funded Institute of Education Sciences Ph.D. training programs in causal inference and interdisciplinary research and has led or co-directed over 25 major randomized controlled trials, which have included randomization and delivery of educational interventions at the student, classroom, school, and district levels. A notable example is his school-level RCT, "Final Reading Outcomes of the National Randomized Field Trial of Success for All", which estimated the effects of a popular nationally disseminated reading program for young children from high-poverty schools.