Impacts of Education Policy on the Classroom (339-0-20)

Instructors

Jen Munson

Meeting Info

Annenberg Hall 345: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

This course explores how federal and state-level education policy impacts educators and their daily work in schools. To do so, we examine the cases of two distinct policy movements: the accountability movement which led to the enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind (2001) law and the standards movement which led to state-level implementation of various teaching and learning standards, including the Common Core State Standards (2010) and the Next Generation Science Standards (2013). While these policies originated in different levels of government, were created by different actors, and had different goals, they interacted in school and district settings to impact teaching and teachers. We will assess these impacts through two primary methods, reading published research and conducting interviews with classroom teachers, and put these forms of evidence in conversation to better understand the role of policy implementation in education.

Learning Objectives

Explain the history and context of the accountability and the standards movements.
Identify the intended outcomes of each policy, the purposes of schooling they reflect, and the problem(s) each was intended to address.
Explore public debates on, representations of, and impacts of these policies through media coverage.
Conduct, analyze, and synthesize interviews with practicing teachers to determine the impacts of education policies on teachers from their own perspectives.
Assess the impacts of these policies, both intended and unintended, on teachers and their work, drawing on multiple forms of data.
Diagnose the causes of education policy impacts on teachers, drawing on multiple forms of data.

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Pre-Registration -- Reserved for SESP Students until the end of preregistration, after which time enrollment will be open to everyone who has taken the prerequisites, if applicable. ANTIREQ: Students cannot receive credit for both SOC_POL 339-0 and SOC_POL 351-0, "Impacts of Education Policy on the Classroom."