Schools and Social Inequality

Catalog description

The neighborhoods where we grow up, and the schools we attend, have lasting impacts on our lives. And yet the opportunities made available through schools are not evenly distributed across children and youth in the U.S. This course will use concepts from economics and sociology to examine the links between public education systems and social inequality by race, class, geography, disability, and other classifications. It will cover topics such as: residential segregation, school finance, school choice, test-based accountability, teacher quality, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Students will work directly with data to analyze patterns and trends in educational inequality, and to assess potential policy solutions. Prerequisite(s): R PAD 316.