DSEP 7420: Foundations of Education in Urban and Diverse Communities

Suzanne Arnold, Ph.D.

Clinical Professor

Office: LSC 723

Phone: 303-408-4096

Office hours: by Appointment

Email:

Janet Lopez, Ph.D.

Director of P-20 Education Initiatives

Office: LSC 1129

Phone: 303-315-6328

Email:

Course Meetings: Hybrid structure – part online, part classroom

Classroom Sessions meet Fridays (5:30 – 8:30pm) and Saturdays (8:30am – 3:00pm) in Lawrence Center 1150.

  • August 21st & 22nd – Class Session #1
  • September 11th & 12th
  • October 9th & 10th

Course Overview

This course focuses on the complex relationship between schools and the larger society of which they are a part. It emphasizes historical, political, and sociological perspectives as we explore the large questions about why we have public schools and examine the interplay of social systems in education (economic, political, social, health, legal). This course will analyze education policies and subsequent implementation as the intended and unintended consequences of many processes: ideological, social, judicial, scientific, political, and economic. Educational leaders need to be able to see policy issues within a broad historical and sociopolitical context to understand how policies are intentionally or unintentionally arrived at, and to comprehend the links between policies and outcomes.

Educational leaders need to be able to explore the past to see how knowledge was perceived, valued, transmitted, received, and validated within educational institutions, and the dynamics that drove changes over time. Case studies of education policies and outcomes will be studied to explicate within a specific temporal and political context complex urban educational problems. Students will be required to critically analyze a local educational policy issue uncovering the context (historical, political, social, and economic), determining if and how the policy was implemented and what the outcomes were (will be), intended as well as unintended.

Required Course Books

Sandra J. Stein, 2004. The Culture of Education Policy. New York: Teachers College Press, 2004. ($26.95)

Pedro A. Noguera. City Schools and the American Dream. New York: Teachers College Press, 2003. ($39.00)

Grades: Grades are earned according to the following allocation:

A / 90-100%
B / 80-89%
C / 70-79%
  • Points accumulate throughout the semester as indicated below. Your grades will be updated on eCollege, so you will always know your academic standing in the course. Monitor your grades as the course progresses and contact me if you have any questions about how you are doing.
  • A grade below a “C” does not count toward your program.
  • Missing class – In graduate school perfect attendance is the norm, especially for hybrid structured courses. Please see course requirements for a more complete explanation.

Course Assignments

  1. Participation and Attendance (10%) - Attendance and active participation in all face-to-face class sessions. Active participation requires you to listen and respond. We only meet face-to-face three weekend sessions (Fri/Sat). Therefore, it is critical that you are prepared and attend each of these sessions. We have invited guests coming to each of these weekend sessions to share their experiences and expertise in educational leadership. There is no way to re-enact or make-up the experiences of these sessions. We realize that sometimes extenuating circumstances exist. Please notify the instructor immediately if you have a class conflict. More than one absence is not acceptable and you will need to drop out of the program. Arrangements will be made on an individual basis to provide a learning experience to account for an absence.
  1. Threaded Discussion Participation(25%) – For each online session, you will be given a prompt to respond to related to the readings or activities for the week. You are required to post and respond to a minimum of three other class member postings. Your responses should demonstrate your understanding of the major ideas or themes that developed from the readings taken together. You are expected to read critically and provide a critical evaluation (pluses/minuses, of particularly illuminating or questionable claims, etc.) of the reading with regard to the weekly theme(s). You will also want to explore how the readings relate to the policy issue you are focusing on for this course. Since the large part of the course in online, it is critical to actively engage in these conversations throughout each week. Please review guidelines in next section of the syllabus for reading and writing critically.
  1. Information Mining for Course Project (15 %) – Mine text (journals, articles, books, websites, etc.) that give you some background information on the historical, sociological, political, and legislative aspects that have helped frame the debate or outcomes of your policy issue. You are required to have a minimum of ten sources.
  • Option One – Annotated Bibliography. Provide an annotated bibliography of the articles, books, websites, etc. you found that help you in developing your arguments for the final course paper. Your annotation for each reference should be no longer than 120 words. For support on how to write an annotated bibliography go to: Please use APA style.
  • Option Two –Research Synthesis Chart. Provide a data chart that includes all of the articles, books, websites, etc. you found that help you in developing your arguments for the final course paper. Your chart should include the title/author (whichever is most appropriate) for each source and a column for you to track each of the following: stakeholder, historical, sociological, political, and legislative aspects of your issue that have helped frame the debate or outcomes of your policy issue. You should also include an APA reference list of all sources. See sample chart below:

Author / Stakeholder Perspective / Historical / Sociological / Political / Legislative
  1. Course Project (50%)

The final project for the class will take the form of a policy perspective or analysis. Select a federal, state, or local policy issue that you feel is salient or ignored in your organization/school setting. There are two parts to this paper:

  • Part I:(25%) Framing Your Policy Issue Research and examine the Historical, Sociological, Political, and Legislative framing of your policy issue – How and by whom has the policy issue been shaped? What are the larger forces that shaped and continue to drive what is happening with the issue? What factors brought the policy issue to the fore? What theory do you draw upon to explain the formation of the policy? Papers should be no longer than 10-15 pages double-spaced (12-point font with 1-inch margins), excluding reference page. Please use APA style. Papers significantly shorter than this limit typically are not adequate.
  • Part II: (25%) Critical Analysis of the policy design, implementation, and outcomes.See guidelines for critical writing in course syllabus under course expectations. Papers should be no longer than 6-10 double-spaced pages (12-point font with 1-inch margins), excluding reference page. Please use APA style. Papers significantly shorter than this limit typically are not adequate.

Examples:

  • Head Start,
  • Title I,
  • School-to-Work,
  • Accountability,
  • Educational standards,
  • Charter schools,
  • Vouchers,
  • School choice,
  • Immigration and ESL,
  • Technology,
  • Americorps,
  • Affirmative action/diversity initiatives,
  • Racial and/or economic achievement gap,
  • Pay for Performance (Procomp)
  • Dropout Prevention/Recovery
  • Low Performing Schools
  • P-20 Data Systems
  • Teacher Identifier
  • In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students
  • Title II (Teacher Education),
  • Campus security and safety,
  • Distance education,
  • Title IX, equity in athletics,
  • Special education delivery services,
  • Suspension/expulsion/discipline issues,
  • Full/half-day kindergarten,
  • Safe schools,
  • School funding,
  • Remediation programs,
  • Disproportionality, special education and/or discipline
  • Year round schooling

Course Expectations

The Importance of Critical Reading – You need to do more than read the required texts in this class; you need to read them critically. As a critical reader of a particular text, you need to use the following questions as a framework to guide you as you read:

  1. What’s the point? This is the analysis issue: What is the author’s angle?
  2. Who says? This is the validity issue: On what (data, literature) are the claims based?
  3. What’s new? This is the value-added issue: What does the author contribute that we don’t already know?
  4. Who cares? This is the significance issue, the most important issue of all, the one that subsumes all the others: Is this work worth doing? Is the text worth reading? Does it contribute something important?

If this is the way critical readers approach a text, then as an analytical writer you need to guide readers toward the desired answers to each of these questions.

The Importance of Analytical Writing – Nearly the entire grade for this course depends on the quality of the written assignments that are defined below. One central purpose of the course is to encourage you to develop your skill at producing effective analytical writing. This skill is essential for anyone who wishes to be successful in meeting the requirements of academic study and who expects to have an impact in the intellectual and professional world of education. This course is a good place to work on enhancing your abilities as a writer.

In writing papers (or blog posts) for this (or any) course, keep in mind the following points.

  1. Pick an important issue: Make sure that your analysis meets the “so what” test. Why should anyone care about your post or topic, anyway? Pick an issue or issues that matters and that you really care about.
  2. Keepfocused: Don’t lose track of the point you are trying to make and make sure the reader knows where you are heading and why.
  3. Aim for clarity: Don't assume that the reader knows what you're talking about; it's your job to make your points clearly. In part this means keeping focused and avoiding distracting clutter. But in part it means that you need to make more than elliptical references to concepts and sources or to professional experience. When referring to readings (from the course or elsewhere), explain who said what and why this point is pertinent to the issue at hand. When drawing on your own experiences or observations, set the context so the reader can understand what you mean. Proceed as though you were writing for an educated person who is neither a member of this class nor a professional colleague, someone who has not read the material you are referring to.
  4. Provide analysis: A good posting or paper is more than a catalogue of facts, concepts, experiences, or references; it is more than a description of the content of a set of readings; it is more than an expression of your educational values or an announcement of your prescription for what ails education. A good paper is a logical and coherent analysis of the issues raised within your chosen area of focus. This means that your paper should aim to explain rather than describe. If you give examples, be sure to tell the reader what they mean in the context of your analysis. Make sure the reader understands the connection between the various points in your paper.
  5. Providedepth, insight, and connections: The best papers are ones that go beyond making obvious points, superficial comparisons, and simplistic assertions. They dig below the surface of the issue at hand, demonstrating a deeper level of understanding and an ability to make interesting connections.
  6. Support your analysis with evidence: You need to do more than simply state your ideas, however informed and useful these may be. You also need to provide evidence that reassures the reader that you know what you are talking about, thus providing a foundation for your argument. Evidence comes in part from the academic literature, whether encountered in this course or elsewhere. Evidence can also come from your own experience. Remember that you are trying to accomplish two things with the use of evidence. First, you are saying that it is not just you making this assertion but that authoritative sources and solid evidence back you up. Second, you are supplying a degree of specificity and detail, which helps to flesh out an otherwise skeletal argument.
  7. Draw on course materials (this applies primarily to blog posts, not the final paper). Your posts should give evidence that you are taking this course. You do not need to agree with any of the readings or presentations, but your paper should show you have considered the course materials thoughtfully.
  8. Recognize complexity and acknowledge multiple viewpoints. The issues in the sociopolitical history of American education are not simple, and your posts/paper should not propose simple solutions to complex problems. It should not reduce issues to either/or, black/white, good/bad. Your posts/paper should give evidence that you understand and appreciate more than one perspective on an issue. This does not mean you should be wishy-washy. Instead, you should aim to make a clear point by showing that you have considered alternate views.
  9. Challenge assumptions. Your posts/paper should show that you have learned something by doing through readings and discussion. There should be evidence that you have been open to changing your mind.
  10. Do not overuse quotation: In a short post, long quotations (more than a sentence or two in length) are generally not appropriate. Even in your final paper, quotations should be used sparingly unless they constitute a primary form of data for your analysis. In general, your post/paper is more effective if written primarily in your own words, using ideas from the literature but framing them in your own way in order to serve your own analytical purposes. However, selective use of quotations can be very useful as a way of capturing the author's tone or conveying a particularly aptly phrased point.
  11. Cite your sources:For your final paper, you need to identify for the reader where particular ideas or examples come from. This can be done through in-text citation using the APA style (please review APA guidelines). Note that citing a source is not sufficient to fulfill the requirement to provide evidence for your argument. As spelled out in #6 above, you need to transmit to the reader some of the substance of what appears in the source cited, so the reader can understand the connection with the point you are making and can have some meat to chew on. The best analytical writing provides a real feel for the material and not just a list of assertions and citations. Depth, insight, and connections count for more than a superficial collection of glancing references. In other words, don't just mention an array of sources without drawing substantive points and examples from these sources; and don't draw on ideas from such sources without identifying the ones you used.For blog posts, be sure to provide author and page number for any specific references to text (i.e. Stein, p. 45).
  12. Take care in the quality of your prose: A post/ paper that is written in a clear and effective style makes a more convincing argument than one written in a murky manner, even when both writers start with the same basic understanding of the issues. However, writing that is confusing usually signals confusion in a person's thinking. After all, one key purpose of writing is to put down your ideas in a way that permits you and others to reflect on them critically, to see if they stand up to analysis. So you should take the time to reflect on your own ideas on paper and revise them as needed. .

Sessions

Part I: Setting the Historical and Political Context: Public Education in Our Cities

Week 1: Weekend Session – August 21st, 22ndPurposes of Public Schooling/Intro to Policy Analysis

Readings for this session provide an overview of the purposes of public schooling. While the Goodlad and McMannon chapters provide a broad historical overview of the changing purposes of education, the Hirsch and Apple chapters represent opposing perspectives. You will also be introduced to the CAP4K bill, which will be used throughout the course to examine and develop analytical skills related to the complexities of policymaking in education.

  • John Goodlad & Timothy McMannon – The Public Purpose of Education and Schooling, Introduction and Chapter 1
  • E.D. Hirsch – The Knowledge Deficit, Ch. 1
  • Michael Apple - Educating the “Right” Way, Ch. 1
  • Policy Strands:
  • CAP4K – SB 212 and supplemental materials, Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids, Senate Bill 212
  • LAT –Ruben Donato - “Sugar Beets, Segregation, and Schools: Mexican Americans in a Northern Colorado Community, 1920-1960”

Week 2: Online – August 23rd – August 29thLocal Context of Public Schooling

This week you will begin reading a book by Sandra Stein which investigates the culture of education policy through analysis of the language and behaviors of policymakers and practitioners at the various stages of the policy process. Using Title I as a case study, Stein traces the rituals and routines revealed in policy practice from the federal to classroom level. We will use this text to examine the interaction between policy making and the historical, political, and sociological perspectives of the purposes of public schools. You will also continue reading and learning more about CAP4K legislation, examining the legislative bill through the lens of Stein’s work with Title I.