Schooling As an Economic Enterprise

EDUC 717

Schooling as an Economic Enterprise

Spring2018– COURSE SYLLABUS

Thursday7:10 to 9:50PM Course # 26517 SOS B4

Professors

Mike Escalante (Thursday)
Office Hours: By Appointment
Phone: 818 802 4769
Email:
Alex Cherniss (Tuesday)
Office Hours: By Appointment
Phone:
Email:
Course Overview / This course is designed to provide an overview of economic and finance issues in urban school settings. The overarching focus of the class is a focus on developing high performing schools. As part of that work, we will seek to understand how resources are allocated and used in schools to meet California’s student performance standards. The course covers three general areas including

1. Economic issues of schooling and education in urban contexts
2. School finance and the use of educational resources to improve student performance
3. Organizational behavior in educational enterprises

As we study these broad areas, we will use the following frameworks to guide our reading and discussion:

1. Individuals (pursuit and value of human capital, utility maximizingassumptions, incentives, signaling/screening, equity—of opportunity/outcomes, etc.)
2. Classroom/school resources (production functions, transformation of inputsto outcomes, efficiency--technical & allocative, equity and adequacy)
3. Organizations (cost minimizing or outcome maximizing? principal-agent,moral hazard and adverse selection, monopoly and monopsony enterprises,equity-efficiency tradeoffs? regulation and accountability--how do marketfailures compare to regulatory inefficiencies?, innovation--the role of riskseekers in a risk averse enterprise).

Course Requirements /

1. To facilitate the learning process, students are expected to read the assignments and prepare a one-page critique in advance of each class period (units 2-13).

1. Students will be expected to prepare a 15-page (maximum) paper due at the end of class. The paper should focus on strategies for improving student performance and how the economic and finance systems can support resource allocation strategies to help all students achieve high levels of performance.

1. In addition, students will be expected to present the material from one of the class units to the balance of the class. Unit assignments will be made the first week of class, and the expectation is the presentations will be prepared and delivered by groups of 3 to 5 students.

Details on assignments are found below.
Textbooks and other materials / Most course readings will be available online through the USC ARIES system for this class. Those that are not on ARIES will be noted in the syllabus and instructions for accessing them will be provided. We will and provide a USB thumb drive for you to use to copy all the readings to your own computer during the first class session. If new readings are added to the course during semester (for example a highly relevant and newly released report), we will provide a URL or place the reading on Blackboard and provide an e-mail and BlackBoard announcement about the new reading and any other associated changes.
Access to ARES requires yourUSC Net IDand password. YourUSC NetID, which is sometimes also referred to as your "username", is the first part of your USC e-mail address; the part before the "@". For example, if your email were '' you would enter 'ttrojan' in the USC NetID box.
Your password is the same as the one you would use to access email using theUSC emailsystem.
Logon to ARES:

Class Participation

/ Although individual work is a critically important element of this course, we could not hope to achieve our course objectives without continuous, sustained interaction among all of us. This is not attendance for the sake of attendance; rather productive learning and writing entails for most of us a large amount of goal-oriented interaction. A primary goal for this course is to foster discussion and interaction among educators pursuing careers in education, but not discussion as an end in itself. More purposefully, it is discussion for production. Consequently, class attendance, discussion, and critical analysis in public arenas are key elements. If you are a California student, because the course is offered in four venuesyou are welcome to participate in each unit at any of the four if you have a conflict with your regularly assigned course section. Please inform all of us (through email) if you plan to attend an alternative session or if you will miss a class.
Mastery of the readings is essential before every class.
Academic Accommodations / Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The phone number for DSP is (213) 740-7766.
Academic Conduct and Support Systems / Academic Conduct
Plagiarism – presenting someone else’s ideas as your own, either verbatim or recast in your own words – is a serious academic offense with serious consequences. Please familiarize yourself with the discussion of plagiarism in SCampus in Section 11, Behavior Violating University Standards Other forms of academic dishonesty are equally unacceptable. See additional information in SCampus and university policies on scientific misconduct,
Discrimination, sexual assault, and harassment are not tolerated by the university. You are encouraged to report any incidents to the Office of Equity and Diversity or to the Department of Public Safety This is important for the safety whole USC community. Another member of the university community – such as a friend, classmate, advisor, or faculty member – can help initiate the report, or can initiate the report on behalf of another person.The Center for Women and Men provides 24/7 confidential support, and the sexual assault resource center webpage describes reporting options and other resources.
Support Systems
A number of USC’s schools provide support for students who need help with scholarly writing. Check with your advisor or program staff to find out more. Students whose primary language is not English should check with the American Language Institute which sponsors courses and workshops specifically for international graduate students.The Office of Disability Services and Programs provides certification for students with disabilities and helps arrange the relevant accommodations. If an officially declared emergency makes travel to campus infeasible, USC Emergency Information provide safety and other updates, including ways in which instruction will be continued by means of blackboard, teleconferencing, and other technology.
Incompletes / IN – incomplete (work not completed because of documented illness or some other emergency occurring after the twelfth week of the semester; arrangements for the IN and its removal should be initiated by the student and agreed to by the instructor prior to the final exam); IX – lapsed incomplete.
Conditions for Removing a Grade of Incomplete. If an IN is assigned as the student’s grade, the instructor will fill out the Incomplete (IN) Completion form which will specify to the student and to the department the work remaining to be done, the procedures for its completion, the grade in the course to date and the weight to be assigned to the work remaining to be done when computing the final grade. A student may remove the IN by completing only the portion of required work not finished as a result of documented illness or emergency occurring after the twelfth week of the semester. Previously graded work may not be repeated for credit. It is not possible to remove an IN by re-registering for the course, even within the designated time.
Time Limit for Removal of an Incomplete.One calendar year is allowed to remove an IN. Individual academic units may have more stringent policies regarding these time limits. If the IN is not removed within the designated time, the course is considered “lapsed,” the grade is changed to an “IX” and it will be calculated into the grade point average as 0 points. Courses offered on a Credit/No Credit basis or taken on a Pass/No Pass basis for which a mark of Incomplete is assigned will be lapsed with a mark of NC or NP and will not be calculated into the grade point average.
Blackboard / Each week you should do the following: Prior to class:access and print the PowerPoint notes for the upcoming session. These are found on the course documents tab. Please bring those notes with you to class.
Note that assignments should be submitted via e-mail directly to the professor
Assignments / One-pagers
One-page critiques of the readings (units 2 through 13) are due at least 24 hours prior to the start of class. Posting to Blackboard after that time period may not be credited as completed. For weekend classes, critiques for all units to be covered that weekend are due 24 hours prior to the start of the Friday class.
Your assignment is to draw from the readings of the coming week one or more concepts, arguments, theories, or findings that you found both striking (“aha!”) and potentially relevant (“wow!”) for your course research papers. You are to write a less-than-one-page, double-spaced report on it, providing only enough of a citation reference to enable others to track back to your source(s) for the week. Within these common parameters individual instructors may provide you with more detailed directions for any of their units, prior to the week that the units are to be read. You will each have a separate file folder in Blackboard to post your weekly assignment. Label each file as follows: [your name], [week number], “Reading analysis”
While you are responsible for having a working knowledge of all of the readings, these papers are not intended as summaries, or even partial summaries of the weekly readings. Rather, they are intended to: (1) demonstrate that you can scan a lot of text and draw from it materials which are relevant and have meaning for your creative work; (2) provide a basis for you and others to understand the critical role of the reader in interpreting text and applying it to other topics; and (3) to provide you (and possibly others) with a steadily accumulating amount of material that might be used as you fashion your paper. Keep these frameworks in mind as you write your one-pagers.
Each week the weekly reports of all students are used as a basis for discussion among the class.
Course Paper
Implied throughout this course is the perspective that the field of economics, especially as considered by educational leaders, is at least as much a way of thinking as it is a discrete subject of study. Economics informs our description, study, analyses, and development of educational policies and practices. As you pursue the production of your course paper, we encourage you to apply the ways of thinking that are set forth in the course and to do so in a manner which makes the most sense to you. That leaves a lot of room both for creativity and for uncertainty.
In order to reduce some of the uncertainty, you should first choose a problem or topic related to your interests and/or work and that can be analyzed through the three perspectives of the class:

1. Resource allocation in your school, district, or organization
2. The Local Contral Funding Formula (LCFF), its impact on your school district and how the district has decided to use LCFF funding in relation to its Local Contral and Accountability Plan (LCAP).
3. How economic concepts discussed in class can be applied to the issue or problem you are analyzing.

As we discuss these concepts during the semester, consider how they apply to your particular problem or topic, your paper, which is due at the end of the semester should consider the problem through these three lenses and offer recommendations as to how the tools used in the course can help address the issue or problem. Ideally your focus will include identification of strategies or programs that can lead to either improved student performance, or the more efficient organization and operation of the school, district or organization you are studying.
To complete this assignment, you will need to submit a short topic paragraph describing the problem you will study and how you think the three concepts of the course might be applied to that problem. This is due about the middle of the semester (see the assignment due dates below for your section. Your instructor will review the paragraph and work with you to further define and assess the issue. The final paper will be due as shown in the assignment due dates below.
Regardless of which type of paper you pursue, do not hesitate to take advantage of classroom discussions and your one-page reading assignments to test your thinking about your paper.
Class Presentations
To facilitate learning and class presentation, each student will be assigned to a group of three to five students and expected to present the important concepts from one of the units reading assignments. We will make assignments to groups during the first week of class, and each group will then be expected to lead the class discussion and organize learning activities around the topic of that unit. How your group chooses to make these presentations will be up to the members of the group.
Grading
Grades will Be Based on the Following:
Item / Percentage of Total Grade
Reading Critiques* / 20%
Course Paper / 40%
Class Group Presentation / 30%
Class Participation / 10%

*Must be 100% completed to earn 20% of total grade.

Assignment Due Dates
Assignment / Thursday
Classes
26517
Reading
Critiques / Due 24 hours before each class / Critiques for all weekend units due 24 hours before start of each Friday class
Short Paper Topic Description / March 8
Final
Paper / April 19
Class
Presentation / As assigned during the first week of class

Course Schedule

Campus Classes

Tuesdays or Thursdays 4:00 to 6:40 PM

Date / Unit / Topic
Jan. 11 / 1 / Introduction
Jan. 18 / 2 / How is Money for Education Raised?
Jan. 25 / No Class: Supt Conference
Feb. 1 / 3 / How are Education Dollars are Distributed?
Feb. 8 / 4 / California School Finance the LCFF and LCAP
Feb 15 / 5 / Local School District Budget Response to LCFF and LCAP (1)
Feb. 22 / 6 / What is a High Performing School?
Mar. 1 / 7 / Resourcing a High Performing School in the Context of LCFF and LCAP
Mar. 8 / 8 / Cost Factors – Student Characteristics
Mar. 15 / No Class: Spring Break
Mar. 22 / 9 / Cost Factors – Teachers
Mar. 29 / 10 / Charter Schools
Apr. 5 / 11 / Economics and Rational Actors
Human Capital – Does Money Matter?
Apr. 12 / 12 / Markets and Hierarchies – Management Behavior in Education Institutions
Producing Educational Resources and Securing Private Resources of the Public Good
Apr. 19
Apr. 26 / 13 / Putting it all Together into School Finance Reform (Ex.Co.Gone)
Summary and Review (Ex.Co.Gone)

UNIT 1

Introduction

This unit will provide an introduction and overview of the course. Our focus throughout the course will be on what constitutes a high performing school, with specific reference to how a high performing school would be defined, how it might be organized (there are likely many options), and how it would be resourced (staff allocation and use, dollar resources, and how revenues are raised, distributed and expended through the California school funding system.

The course is organized around three concepts - the economic context of urban schooling, K-12 finance issues, organizational behavior in educational enterprises. The goal of this first class is to identify and discuss the interaction, indeed the interdependency, of all topics addressed throughout the course. As an illustration, all units will address in varying ways the broad relationships associated with raising and spending financial and other resources in schooling, and how those resources can best be used to improve student learning and performance.

All three units will provide an array of economics-related concepts and principles which can be applied to your professional education pursuits, including the course paper. The readings for this introductory class session are meant to serve as a “sampler”, touching on major topics that will be addressed throughout the course.

REQUIRED READINGS

Henry M. Levin. (1989). Mapping the Economics of Education. Educational Researcher May 1989, pp13-16, 73. This is available on Thumb Driveand is also available through the USC library system for pdf download.

Taylor, L. (1999). Government’s Role in Primary and Secondary Education. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Economic Review. First Quarter, 1999

Also be sure to familiarize yourself with the EdSource website at and the PACE (Policy Analysis for California Education) website at

Optional Readings

Public Educaton Finances: 2014 Available on thumb drive and at:

NCES Mobile Digest of Education Statistics, 2014. Available only at

NCES, Selected Statistics From the Public Elementary and Secondary Education universe: School Year 2014-15. Available on thumb drive and at:

NEA, Rankings & Estimates: Rankings of the States 2014 and Estimates of School Statistics 2016. Available on thumb drive and at

Leachman, M. and Mai, C. (2014). Most States Still Funding Schools Less Than Before the Recession. Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Available on thumb drive.

Unit 2

How is money for education raised?

UNIT LEARNING GOALS

To understand and be able to articulate in writing and/or orally:

1.The size of the education sector in the United States economy and how it varies across states and regions of the country

2.How public education has changed in the way it allocates and uses educational resources over time, particularly since the publication of A Nation at Risk.

3.How funding in California compares with the rest of the United States

4.A definition of education finance adequacy and how adequate levels of funding for schools can be estimated

5.How school districts raise revenues for education

6.Approaches to measuring “how much” is needed to fund our schools if they are to succeed in helping all children reach high levels of performance.