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),[1] 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 Every Student Succeeds Act.
His article "National Efforts to Bring Reform to Scale in High-Poverty Schools: Outcomes and Implications",[2] 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 advanced the evidence-based policy movement in the field of education and 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 "real-world" field settings.
Borman has directed multiple federally funded Institute of Education Sciences (IES) 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" (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.
[3] This study was one of the first significant examples of a large-scale, school-level, cluster randomized trial conducted in the United States.
Borman has achieved a number of prominent awards and honors and has been selected on multiple occasions by Education Week as one of the top 200 scholars having the most significant influence on United States education practice and policy.
When he received the American Educational Research Association Early Career Award in San Diego on April 14, 2004 at the Awards Presentation and Presidential Address of the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting,[7] Stephen Raudenbush, the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and the Chair of the Award Committee, stated that his "books and numerous articles have established Geoffrey Borman as one of the nation's premier researchers on federal education policy for children living in poverty."
A replicable identity-based intervention reduces the Black-white suspension gap at scale.
The academic impacts of a brief middle-school self-affirmation intervention help propel African American and Latino students through high school.
Replicating a scalable intervention that helps students reappraise academic and social adversity during the transition to middle school.
A multisite randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of Descubriendo la Lectura.
Addressing the literacy needs of struggling Spanish-speaking first graders: First-year results from a national randomized controlled trial of Descubriendo la Lectura.
Self-affirmation effects are produced by school context, student engagement with the intervention, and time: Lessons from a district-wide implementation.
Advancing values affirmation as a scalable strategy for mitigating identity threats and narrowing national achievement gaps.
New evidence on self-affirmation effects and theorized sources of heterogeneity from large-scale replications.
A multi-state district-level cluster randomized trial of the impact of data-driven reform on reading and mathematics achievement.
Family and contextual socioeconomic effects across seasons: When do they matter for the achievement growth of young children?
Schools and inequality: A multilevel analysis of Coleman’s Equality of Educational Opportunity data.
A randomized field trial of the Fast ForWord Language computer-based training program.
A multi-site cluster randomized field trial of Open Court Reading.
A randomized trial of teacher development in elementary science: First-year achievement effects.
Final reading outcomes of the national randomized field trial of Success for All.
The longitudinal achievement effects of multi-year summer school: Evidence from the Teach Baltimore randomized field trial.
National efforts to bring reform to scale in high-poverty schools: Outcomes and implications.