CREO faculty publish in top outlets in sociology and education, as well as related fields. Because a department's reputation and standing is shaped by past as well as recent research productivity, career publications for faculty members in the department remain essential for advancing its mission. Because a department's reputation and standing is shaped by past as well as recent research productivity, career publications for faculty members in the department remain essential for advancing its mission. CREO faculty have expertise in a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods, and are well-known for their expertise in utilizing complex, large, national-level and state-level datasets . The importance and impact of their work is evidenced in their success in obtaining competitive external grants from organizations such as the National Science Foundation ,as well as the high rates of citation for their published work. Collectively, their research investigates a diverse array of issues of sociological importance, with consequences for educational policy and practice. Read below for an overview of some current research projects.
Education in Prison Study
This collaborative pilot project co-led by Dr. Anna Haskins' explores additional intersections between schooling and punishment by focusing on college-in-prison programs. Participation in educational programming in prison is known to have positive impacts on the incarcerated, but programs often vary in scope and content, and impacts are narrowly measured in terms of just employment or recidivism. Using survey methods and multi-state outreach, this project aims to assess the impact of participation in in-prison educational programming on measures of civic, economic, and social wellbeing to explore a larger range of outcomes important to individual, intergenerational, and community wellbeing.
Gendered Educational Experiences and Trajectories
Several ongoing projects use largescale data to examine the construction of gender inequality in K-12 education and its connection to and implications for larger patterns of inequality. One project led by Dr. Catherine Riegle-Crumb uses national data from the High School and Beyond (HS&B) study to examine how young women and men’s gender egalitarian beliefs are associated with their educational pathways, with subsequent implications for occupational inequality in adulthood. Another project led by Dr. William Carbonaro and Dr. Riegle-Crumb uses K-12 educational data from the state of Indiana to examine gender differences in who receives gifted/talented (G/T) designations in math and language arts, and considers potential variation by race and social class, as well as the variable consequences of such designations for students’ educational futures.
Effects of School Choice in Indiana
Indiana has expanded its school choice offerings through its scholarship (voucher) program and the growth of charter schools. This project, led by Dr. Mark Berends and colleagues, addresses the impacts of vouchers and charter schools on student achievement gains, engagement, high school graduation, and college attendance and graduation. The project also examines whether these impacts differ among groups, thus affecting the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic achievement gaps. The project analyzes several years of longitudinal, student-level demographic and test score records from CREO’s partnership with the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) and the Management Performance Hub (MPH).In addition, the project team conducted over 100 interviews of principals, teachers, parents, and students in thirteen private schools participating in the voucher program. These interviews offer valuable insights into the academic, social, and religious integration of students who receive vouchers. The team revisited these schools in 2017-18 to understand how schools have changed in response to the voucher program.
Place and Educational Inequality
Dr. Amy Langenkamp is leading a project that investigates the ways in which where a child lives and the context of that place affects educational outcomes. While school context is a good starting place for better understanding inequality in educational achievement and attainment, it is essential to think beyond the classroom and school doors when trying to understand the myriad ways in which where children live and go to school affect their life trajectory. The effect that a community has on an individual or group likely hinges on the characteristics of place. This project develops a theory of place as it relates to the education of children, starting with the concept of context of reception as a way to understand how place affects students’ outcomes in the midst of demographic and population change. This project involves mapping the demographic population change over time, focusing on districts and schools with the most change and immigration to new immigrant destinations. Langenkamp also investigates the elements of place by using a mixed methods approach to better understand distinctions in urban, town, and rural communities in terms of their educational needs amidst population change.
Racial Inequality in Course-Taking Careers
Dr. William Carbonaro is studying how racial inequality in students' math course-taking careers develops from grades 6 through 12 in Indiana. Black students are less likely than white students to complete advanced math courses by the end of high school. In this project, he examines how racial inequality in math course-taking develops from middle school through high school. Students’ math course-taking histories are best understood as course-taking careers, and Dr. Carbonaro developed an analytical framework that highlights how course-taking dynamics (i.e., timing of entry into Algebra I, course failures, course repetitions, and absence of math enrollment) affect math course-taking attainments. He analyzes statewide administrative data from Indiana, and finds that from grades 7 through 12, Black students are more likely than white students to: enter Algebra I at later grade levels, fail a math course, repeat a math course, and skip math in a given semester. Most of these differences are explained by racial disparities in prior achievement. Course-taking dynamics strongly affect math course attainments, and much of the effect of prior achievement on math course attainments is mediated by these variables. Thus, racial disparities in initial achievement largely work through course-taking dynamics, which in turn create racial inequality in course attainments.
Danger in the Halls: School Weapons and Student Academic Performance in Indiana
Dr. Steven Alvarado is leading a series of research projects on the link between deadly weapons in schools and students’ achievement outcomes. These projects are motivated by a troubling trend in students’ exposure to weapons in Indiana public schools. Between 2008-2018, approximately 74% (N= 939, 950) of grade 3 - 8 students in Indiana public schools were exposed to deadly weapons (e.g., guns and knives) on school premises. Research suggests that weapons in schools may contribute to a negative school climate, lead to negative school cultural framing, and may impact teacher effectiveness. However, a gap in the literature exists regarding the link between weapons in schools and student performance on standardized tests. Moreover, little is known about the conditions (i.e., neighborhoods and students’ race/ethnicity) in which weapons may have a stronger or weaker influence on test scores. These projects seek to fill these gaps in knowledge. Dr. Alvarado and his collaborators will leverage restricted administrative student records from the Indiana Department of Education for all students who attended public schools between 2008 - 2018. The primary research question is whether exposure to weapons in schools impacts student performance on tests in grades 3 - 8. As a secondary question, these studies examine if there are differences in impacts by students’ neighborhood socioeconomic conditions and race/ethnicity. Understanding how the presence of weapons in schools impacts student performance and how this varies across neighborhoods and student sub-populations provides crucial knowledge for designing effective policies that keep children safe and in environments that are conducive to learning.
Systems and Schools Study
Dr. Anna Haskins is currently leading a project that aims to explore processes through which elementary schools inhibit or promote institutional engagement among parents. She is most interested in learning about the relationship between parents and their children’s schools, with a focus on parents who have been involved with the criminal justice, immigration enforcement, or child welfare systems. This project explores this relationship from the perspective of both school personnel and system-involved parents, aiming to aid in the creation of strong relationships between schools and families.
Partnership with Indiana Department of Education
In 2012, the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO) of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives entered into a partnership with the Indiana Department of Education to improve learning for Indiana children. In 2012, Dr. Mark Berends established the partnership with Dr. Tony Bennett, Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction at the time. This partnership has spanned both Democratic and Republican administrations and continues today under Indiana's Secretary of Education, Dr. Katie Jenner. The research-practice collaboration enables the nation’s leading educational experts at the Institute and others from around the country to conduct independent, nonpartisan, empirical research that informs IDOE's strategic priorities for education, ultimately improving educational quality in Indiana. Studies focus on such topics as the effects of parental choice programs on schools, teachers, and students; improving the quality of teaching and teacher preparation; organizational and instructional conditions that reduce educational inequalities; the impact of choosing courses on student outcomes; and factors related to students’ applications, attendance, and persistence in higher education. Drs. Mark Berends and Joe Waddington lead the research-practice partnership.
School Effectiveness in Indiana
Led by Dr. Mark Berends and Joe Waddington, this study examines how schools of choice (charter or private schools) differ from traditional public schools in terms of organizational and instructional conditions, school leadership, professional capacity, school learning climate, funding conditions, as well as parent involvement and support that promote achievement. Because students in traditional public, charter, and private schools all take the same state assessments, we have a unique opportunity to examine achievement gains across students and school sectors using longitudinal student assessment data from the Indian Department of Education. With additional longitudinal data collected from schools and teachers in a representative sample of K-8 traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools, we examine the conditions under which the impacts of the voucher and charter schools occur (sample of 577 schools, 5,300 teachers).
Success by Address: Childhood Neighborhood Disadvantage and College Enrollment
Dr. Steven Alvarado is leading a research project to better understand the role of neighborhood origins on college success. As a backdrop, his project is inspired by two massive shifts in housing and schooling that have occurred in the United States in the past 40 years. First, residential income segregation has markedly increased, especially among families with children. Second, postsecondary enrollment has greatly expanded, likely as a result of higher wages for college-educated workers. As these two secular trends have ascended side-by-side, a puzzle has emerged: Are families competing for neighborhoods that can ensure their children’s success in the college game? If so, are families increasingly hoarding geo-spatial opportunities to maximize their children’s socioeconomic success? To illuminate possible answers to these questions, Dr. Alvarado examines three successive cohorts of federally restricted data on students who went to college in the early 1980s, the mid-2000s, and the late 2010s to understand whether the neighborhoods in which students grew up have increasingly differential impacts on their college enrollment and college selectivity outcomes. Using geocoded data from the NLSY 1979, NLSY Children and Young Adults, and transcript data from the High School Longitudinal Study, Steven tracks students from childhood and adolescence through young adulthood and finds that the neighborhoods where they grew up indeed do have increasingly differential impacts on their college outcomes across these three cohorts of students. His research has implications for forecasts of future economic disparities as increased competition for housing among families continues to contract students’ access to higher education.
Intergenerational Social Mobility Study
This new project started by Dr. Anna Haskins aims to explore intergenerational transmissions of mobility for contemporary American families. This work aims to contribute to our current knowledge on intergenerational transmissions of poverty and mobility in the United States by using 25 years of rich longitudinal parent and child data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to quantitatively describe and analyze the nature of intergenerational educational, earnings, and employment mobility among a contemporary and diverse cohort of American families, many of whom experience poverty.