Production Automation for GaAs MMICs

The Stratification of High School Learning Opportunities

“…While most students would benefit from taking more advanced or honors courses, low achieving students may benefit from greater academic challenge even if they are not simply to be assigned to trigonometry and calculus classes. (Oakes, 1985). In contrast to math and science, we had no useful information on course topics in English and social studies, and only small portions of the track effects on reading, vocabulary, writing, and civics were explained by available coursework data.…”

“…Rosenbaum argued that this indicated that students were frequently misinformed about their own track placements, and that analyses relying on student reports used inaccurate data (see also Rosenbaum, 1984 This model is more appropriate for schools in which choices are available (e.g., Powell, Farrar, and Cohen, 1985) than schools where students are placed in clearly marked tracks and assigned to a specified array of classes largely on the basis of their track positions (e.g., Rosenbaum, 1976). Recent observations of high schools suggest that the former are most common (Oakes, 1985;Powell, Farrar, and Cohen, 1985). Moreover, in schools where tracking is rigid and well-specified, student perceptions are likely to agree with school records, so the use of student perceptions is unlikely to introduce inaccuracies in estimating effects on opportunities and learning.…”

Effects of School Restructuring on the Achievement and Engagement of Middle-grade Students

“…Research findings also show consistently that ability grouping and tracking increase the disparity in achievement over time for students from different social and racial/ethnic backgrounds (Braddock, 1990;Hanson, 1990;Lee & Bryk, 1988;Oakes, 1985). The Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development Such alternative structures as cooperative learning, which presumes heterogeneous ability levels in grouped instruction, have demonstrated some success in both increasing student achievement and improving social relations between students (Newmann & Thompson, 1987;Slavin, 1985Slavin, , 1988).…”

“…The single most common response to this difficulty --grouping students homogeneously by ability --while logical and efficient, is also wrought with problems. As suggested above, it is well established that tracking and course-taking in high school are the most powerful predictors of academic achievement, surpassing the effects of family background (see, for example, Braddock, 1990;Gamoran, 1987;Lee 6 Bryk, 1988;Oakes, 1985). Curriculum differentiation, where students are grouped homogeneously by ability, contributes to strikingly negative consequences for students in the lower tracks, in both achievement and attitudes toward learning (Anderson & Barr, 1990;Braddock, 1990;Hoffer, 1991;Page, 1990;Schafer & Olexa, 1971).…”

“…Further, the differentiation of functions and increased emphasis on classification for instruction in bureaucratically organized schools magnifies the variation in achievement between students of different social backgrounds (Bryk & Lae, in press;Bryk et al, 1990;Lee & Bryk, 1989). The large body of research on tracking has been consistent in finding that less advantaged students receive less rigorous instruction in non-academic curricular tracks, indicating that such academic differentiation results in increasing social stratification in achievement (Oakes, 1985;Rosenbaum, 1976;Shafer & Olexa, 1971).…”