Poverty, Inequality and Education

Catalog description

This course examines the nature and extent of poverty and economic inequality in the U.S. and the role local, state, and federal educational policy has played in both maintaining poverty inequality and seeking to ameliorate it. Students will consider the ways in which social inequality begets educational inequality, and how educational inequality reproduces social inequality in broader society. Drawing primarily from sociological and anthropological scholarship, the course will review some of the historical patterns and contemporary links between social and educational inequality. Students will be asked to consider the structural forces of inequality in neighborhoods and schools, and how those forces contribute to unequal opportunities, experiences, and achievement outcomes for students along lines of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and immigration status. Specific attention will be given to the impact of neoliberal policies on public education since 1980.