Peter Wruck
Peter J. Wruck
Peter J. Wruck
Ph.D. Student
Research Assistant
MITER program
Department of Educational Psychologye-mail: wruc0007@umn.edu
1058 Social Sciences
267 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0499
--OR--
196 Education Sciences
56 East River Rd
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0364Education:
B.S., cum Laude, University of Minnesota -- Sociology and African American Studies
Thesis title: "Learning Apart Together: A Bloc Framework for Understanding Race in a Modern Suburban High School"Interest Areas:
Educational inequality, racial inequality, public housing and urban ghettos in the United States, cognitive student outcomes, social statistics, repression studies, social movements, Marxist theory, comparative historical sociologyCurrent Research:
How "blurred" has the line between "traditional" high school and "traditional" college become? With increasing demand for remedial classes at the college level coupled with exploding enrollment in programs like AP, IB, PSEO, and college in the schools, perhaps the discrete boundary no longer exists. With Prof. Rob Warren and Caren Arbeit, I am currently conducting research on just how "blurred" the line has become as well as who benefits from these programs and who doesn't.Utilizing data from the Minnesota Department of Education and local school districts, I am attempting to show whether or not school referenda actually have corresponding gains (or prevention of loss) in student achievement. The impetus behind any school referendum is to either raise student achievement or keep it from dropping. Two districts will be selected with similar backgrounds and demographic characteristics, but one with a strong history of passing school referenda and one with a weak history of passing such referenda. Controlling for confounding variables, will we see better student achievement in the district with strong referenda? We will see.
Links
October 21st, 2007
Wruck's Sociology Website -- My personal resource for teaching undergraduates