Education and Child Study 336 - SEM: AMERICAN EDUCATION

Topics course. The seminar explores how the challenges facing schools in America's cities are entwined with social, economic and political conditions present within the urban environment and how the interplay of these forces shape the nature of educational reform in the urban context. We will investigate school reform efforts at the macro-level by looking at policy-driven initiatives such as high stakes testing, vouchers, and privatization and at the local level by exploring the work of teachers, parents, youth workers and reformers.We begin by exploring the sources of the achievement gap and its relationship to conditions present in the urban context, move to analyzing the policy process, and then to evaluating on-the-ground reform efforts to improve teaching and student learning. There is a service learning commitment with this course.

Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores