INTRO TO EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
What is the role of schools in US society? Are schools vehicles for equity and opportunity or stratification and inequality? This course examines the purpose, structure, and challenges of the US educational system in a global context as well as the experiences of the diverse learners and teachers within the US system. It also explores how US educational institutions have served to create social mobility and opportunity, but also to perpetuate inequality across race, class, gender, and other axes of difference.
DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION
This course examines the relationship – or lack thereof– between the ideals of democracy and the way American schools are governed. It introduces philosophical ideas about the role of democracy in public education and the central role of race to understanding both. The course also aims to develop a working understanding of the key institutions (e.g. school districts, state education agencies, Congress, the executive branch, and the courts) and actors (e.g. elected officials, teachers’ unions, the business community, parents, and the general public) that are centrally involved with education policy in the present-day.
We will survey present conflicts over education governance, recent policy changes, and the logic of ongoing reforms in search of an understanding of where democracy currently fits. We will develop this understanding of where democracy fits within the current education policy landscape by drawing on concepts from political science.
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN EDUCATION
This course offers an analytical foundation for students who are interested in public policy implementation, with particular emphasis on education. Drawing on social science research, the course examines the strengths and limitations of various education reform initiatives at the federal, state, and local level. We will also apply analytical concepts to school reform issues with an emphasis on lived experience and racial and economic equity.
RACE & DEMOCRACY IN URBAN EDUCATION POLICY
This course will provide a broad introduction to contemporary education policy centered on issues of race/ethnicity and ideas of democracy. Students will begin by engaging theories of democracy (representative, pluralist, participatory, deliberative) and theories of race (racial formation, critical race theory, racial solidarity, symbolic racism). The course will then transition to analyzing major education policy debates such as: school desegregation, school finance, teacher evaluation, curriculum development standards, accountability, educator policies (collective bargaining, certification), special education, and the current policy landscape. The course will include final group projects where students apply the theoretical concepts to strategies for school reform, with the neighboring school districts as cases.
