EDU 801: K-12 Education Policy Analysis for School Leaders

Credit Hours: 3

Estimated Hours Per Week: 20

Overview

Since the release more than twenty years ago of the seminal report A Nation at Risk, by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, education and education policy have dramatically changed. Informed by and responding to global studies showing American K‑12 students falling behind those in many other countries in achievement, governments and educators in the United States took notice, and action. Today, K‑12 education policy is synonymous with school reform. Governments are no longer content to simply study an issue, paint broad policy brushstrokes, and leave it to regulatory bodies to fill in the details and delegate to local school boards the responsibility to implement policies. Instead, government at all levels—local, state, and increasingly, national—is a direct participant in the teaching and learning processes going on in most of America’s classrooms.

Improving and assessing student, teacher, and school performance, and increasing school accountability, are not just buzz words in education policy making. How schools are organized, who runs them, and what they achieve as measured against increasingly national, even international, performance expectations and policy indicators, are key questions of education policy analysis.

Perhaps the most challenging issue of this new century is the survival of America’s time-honored tradition of public education itself. Confronted by a rising school choice movement and market-driven agendas, public education is increasingly shaped by public policy makers who apply marketplace strategies and encourage direct competition, who no longer defer to those in the traditional education establishment, and who do not support schools that do not make the grade. All of this is taking place in a growing multicultural society challenging traditional values and changing school cultures. In a way, the title No Child Left Behind says it very clearly: American education policy is focused on fixing a student achievement gap, one that won’t easily go away and one that has become the central conundrum vexing federal education policy makers and state and local governments and educators. For school leaders in the 21^st Century, policy analysis is a front-burner issue. For this course, it is the primary subject.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

Analyze and evaluate major issues confronting education policy makers in the 21^st Century; education policies; and policy drivers.
Analyze and evaluate the changing roles of governments involved in education policy making.
Analyze and evaluate the current federal role in education policy making; the various current federal reform strategies; the impact of these federal reform strategies on the education policymaking system; and the impact of federal reform on a specific education problem.
Analyze and evaluate how key federal education policies have impacted states and local schools and districts; the education policy challenges faced by state and local officials and policy makers; state accountability measures and intervention policies; efforts to close achievement gaps; and the impact of state and local policy on a specific education problem.
Compare and contrast U.S. efforts to close achievement gaps with those of other countries—and the outcomes.
Prepare a synthetic monograph with critical analysis and data supporting a change in a particular policy provision or implementation strategy to solve an important education problem.

ENROLLMENT

To enroll in this course, please complete the online application.

Required Texts
EDU 801 texts are available from the JIU/MBS bookstore