POL 216 - Education Policy and Practice (1)

This course will explore education policies and their relationship to sociological patterns of school resegregation, the rise of credentialism, the end of educational expansion, and inequality of educational opportunity. Students in the course will be introduced to the history of policymaking in education beginning with the education reform policies of Horace Mann. Students will also examine demographic data on educational attainment, analyze the policies that alleviate or reinforce educational inequality, and describe what assumptions lie behind current reform ideas. We will evaluate the dynamics of current debates by referencing the long-standing tensions among the different purposes of schooling we have in our nation. Same course as EDU 216
(Social Science)