Opportunity and American Education  
Professor Michael Clapper  
Education  
Fall 2009 
 
Formal Course Description  
What role do schools play in creating opportunity for students?  How do they limit or deny it?  What is the connection between the ways schools and districts operate and the loftier goals expressed for American education?   This course tracks the issue of educational opportunity through American history.   From the early days of religious formation and educational entrepreneurship to the rights revolutions of the 1960s, we will survey how opportunity has been shaped in multiple realms: legal (de facto vs. de jure segregation), legislative, and judicial (integration vs. desegregation) as well as the ways in which access to education has shaped the daily lives of students.   We will consider questions of race, class, and gender as they emerge in the development of systems of education.   
 
Informal Course Description: 
This class will explore the role of education in American life (in expanding or contracting) 
educational opportunity.  Implicit in any understanding of opportunity is what one believes about the purpose of education in a society.  In many ways, opportunity mediates the relationship between schools and society, between schools and labor markets, between schools and local communities.  And the perception of opportunity is just as important: do schools offer an opportunity for economic advancement or intellectual challenges.  Finally, remember that education isn't just about schooling:  I have tried to structure the syllabus so that we can consider many different elements of education, from pre-K to graduate school; there are gaps that you'll fill in on your own.   While many of our readings are historical in nature, you ought to consider how the intellectual skills necessary to understand a unique historical context can serve you in analyzing the present day.  

 
Books:

Derek Bok, The Shape of the River (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).  
Ron Formisano, Boston Against Busing : Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

Jerome Karabel, The Chosen : The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005.

Doug Massey et al, The Source of the River (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

James Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education : a civil rights milestone and its troubled legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

Dan Perlstein, Justice, Justice (NY: Peter Lang, 2004). 

David Tyack and Elizabeth Hansot, Learning together : a history of coeducation in American public schools (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992). 
 

Coursepack/on-line 
James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 79-109. 

Barbara Beatty, "Child Gardening: The Teaching of Young Children in America." In American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work, (New York: Macmillan, 1989),65-97.

Ellen Brantlinger, Dividing Classes: How The Middle class Negotiates and Rationalizes School Advantage (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003). (chapter on Moms)   
John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New  York: The Macmillan Company, 1916 ), 81-110.    
W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A.C. McLurg, 1903), ch1 and 2.   
bell hooks, Bone Black ( NY: Henry Holt, 1996) 
Harvey Kantor and Barbara Brenzel. "Urban Education and the "Truly Disadvantaged": The Historical Roots of the Contemporary Crisis, 1945-1990." In The "Underclass" debate : Views from History, edited by Michael B. Katz, 367-402. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. 
Philip Kasinitz et al, Becoming New Yorkers (NewYork: Russell Sage, 2006).   
Michael B. Katz, Reconstructing American Education (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), ch. 2.   
Jonathan Kozol, "Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid." Harper's (2005). 
David Labaree , Curriculum, Credentials, and the Middle Class: A Case Study of a 19th Century High School, Sociology of Education, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), pp. 42-57.   
David Labaree How to succeed in school without really learning : the credentials race in American education. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997.(ch 1-2)  
Marvin Lazerson/Grubb, Vocationalism in Higher Education: The Triumph of the Education Gospel, The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2005), pp. 1-25 
Horace Mann, 12th Annual Report (focus particularly on the sections on moral education and religious education)   
Jay MacLoud. Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations of Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood. 2nd ed. Boulder: Westview Press, 2004. (ch5/6 and updated 9/10)   
Elaine Mar , Paper Daughter, (NY: Harper Collins, 1999), 1-94.     
Katherine Neckerman, Schools Betrayed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007) 32-59.   
Orfield, Gary, Article on 1964 Civil Rights Act   
Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary, 11-84 

Rosalind Rosenberg, The Limits of Access: The History of Coeducation in America

Clarence Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son, (p.1-48).    
Roger Waldinger, Immigration and the Remaking of Urban America (Berkeley: University of California, 2001) 30-79, 308-330.   
Washington, Booker T., The Atlanta Compromise

A Nation at Risk Report    
 
 
 
 

Part One: Framing the issue; defining our terms; beginning to consider the purpose of education  
Week one: Theoretical questions around opportunity  
Questions to consider: what is the difference between equality of opportunity vs. equality of condition   
Do all students have a right to an education?  What should those rights consist of?  What are the different ways that individuals construct opportunity?   
Readings: Thomas, Rose, hooks, Mar,  
 
Week two: Myths and Realities:  Education and Opportunity 
What does a good education provide? What should a good education provide?   What is the relationship between education and a child’s future? Should education prepare students for economic advancement? A Civic life?  Morality?   Again, how do questions of opportunity relate to the stated and unstated goals of education?  
Readings: Bok, Ch. 5; Labaree; Dewey; Mann; A Nation at Risk;  
 
Week Three: Opportunity:  Public vs. Private    
Who should be responsible for ensuring opportunity?  Is it up the state or should it be left to private communities?  What rights ought every child to have?  What responsibilities does a government have?  How have debates over public vs. private sources of education shaped questions of opportunity?   How do the descriptions and conflicts described in our readings continue to resonate?  How do they foreshadow the No Child Left Behind act, if at all?   
Readings: Katz; Beatty; Labaree; Executive summary of No Child Left Behind;

Part Two: Case studies  
1880-1945  
Week Four:  Coeducation in Schools  
What are the issues that emerged around co-education?  How do notions of gender shape opportunity?  Considering higher education next to elementary and secondary education, how do the opportunities differ?  How do institutions shift the goals of reformers?   
Readings:       Tyack/Hansot, Rosenberg,  
 
Week Five:   Schools and Job Markets  
What’s the relationship between race and vocationalism? Between class and vocationalism?  Should schools be teaching students how to work? What occupational opportunities should schools create? 
Readings:   DuBois/Washington; James Anderson; Lazerson/Grubb; A Nation at Risk; MacLoud

Week Six:   Universities and Opportunity (I)   
What are the hidden ways that educational opportunity is created or obscured?  How do those in power maintain power?   
Readings: Karabel, Jerome, The Chosen; Bok, Ch.1&2;  
 
Week Seven: Student Presentation Group One  (Issue to 1945)   

1945-2001  
Week Eight: The State and Maintaining/Creating Opportunity:  
What remedies should be used to ensure opportunity?  Legislative? Judicial? Executive? Informal or Formal?   Does equality of opportunity trump equality of condition? Or vice versa?   
Readings: Patterson, Orfield;  Kozol;

Week Nine:   When Rights collide 
How do we define community? Whose rights are bound to be respected? How does place change the questions?   
Readings: half of the class: Perlstein  half of the class:  Formisano 
 
Week Eleven:  Student Presentation Group Two (Issue, 1945-2001)   
 
2001-   
Week Twelve: Immigration  
How have schools dealt with difference?  What are the ways in which schools have recently begun to address this issue?  How does the diversity of immigrant populations influence educational opportunities?   
Readings: Waldinger,Kasinitz et al;  
 
Week Thirteen: Re-segregation/Geography:  
How does residence shape opportunity, for better or worse? How can a society address entrenched divisions supported by law or by custom?   
Readings: Kantor/Brenzel; Brandtlinger; Massey et al;  
 
Week Fourteen: Student Presentation Group three (Present Day Issue)   
 
Week Fifteen:  Conclusions   
 

 
Assignments:  
 
1.  Opportunity Memoir  (15%)    
As you consider your own educational experiences, particularly in light of the opening excerpts we’ll read, what opportunities presented themselves?  What opportunities did you pursue?  What opportunities were open to you? What was the source of your opportunities?    
2.  Group Presentation  (10%)   
In a small group, you will be responsible for  devising a week’s study on a topic not presently slotted in the course; you should be prepared to facilitate class, you should provide an outline of the readings your group undertook; 

3.  Take Home Midterm  (15%)   
4.  Review essay  (20%)  

Each of the books in our class was one of many on a particular topic.  Your job is to write a comprehensive review of the book we read along with two or three others.  You can meet with me for suggestions or you can do some digging on your own.  You might look towards the New York Review of Books or the journal Reviews in American History for examples of what these reviews might look.  

5.  Research Proposal   (20%)   
We will spend the semester reading about different approaches to measuring opportunity and the ways in which institutions have sought to create, limit, or deny opportunities.  Using our course as the literature review, create a 10-12 page research proposal on an issue regarding education and opportunity.  How would you study it? What would approach would you use?  What steps would you take?  How have other scholars studied it? 

6.  Participation, Class Leadership, and Discussion Posts   20%   
For this course to work, you must be in class and ready to go.  There are multiple ways to participate -- on-line, in small groups, in large group discussions -- for those comfortable with different modes of conversation.   You must be ready to engage me, your classmates, and your own beliefs about race, class, and education for this class to matter.    
(7%)  Attendance: no absences (all seven points).   Each additional absence subtracts three points from this grade. 
(7%)  Course Discussion Board:  Before Tuesday night at midnight, write a brief paragraph describing your response to the reading.  It doesn’t have to be very long but ought to outline something you found provocative or troubling about the reading.  Nine or more post earns all seven points; eight posts earns four points; anything less earns zero points.  Posts not submitted by the time deadline will not count. Several examples of the kinds of posts I’m looking for are available on the discussion board.       
(6%) Participation: you need to be there each week.  To earn all six points, you should be a frequent participant who makes accurate, considered comments on the readings; a student who draws insightful connections to other students’ ideas and their own.  You should be someone who participates willingly in group activities and projects; serves as a leader or a scribe regularly during group process.  Perhaps most important, you should be someone who provides significant direction and service to the classroom.  
 
 

 
Clusters of Potential Student Group Topics

These are just suggestions.  If your research uncovers a better idea for a topic, let’s discuss it.   
 
Group One:   
Kindergarten   
Women's Higher Education  
Americanization/Immigration    
Early Testing movement   
 
Group Two:   
IDEA/The quest for special education  
GI Bill/Democratization of Higher Education   
SAT and the emergence of ETS  
Headstart   
Higher Education and African Americans 
 
Group Three:   
Universal pre-k  
School Funding:  
Multiculturalism  
Charter Schools and the “choice” movement   
English Language Learners/ English as a Second Language   
High Stakes Testing and the Accountability Movment   
The Digital Divide