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This article advocates a quantitative sociological approach to measuring curriculum differentiation and its effects. It distinguishes between the social organization of schools, which includes such arrangements as the grouping and tracking of students, and the instructional processes that occur within classes. Because organization and instruction can vary independently, it is necessary to examine the academic experiences that presumably link students' outcomes with their positions in the school stratification system. An agenda for research calls for combining survey with observational methods to examine measures of track organization and instructional activities that are sensitive to conditions that differ across schools.
Adam Gamoran (Wed,) studied this question.