Education/Urban Studies xxx:   
Urban Education 
Professor Michael Clapper  
 
Formal Course Description:  
Why is there so much discussion of urban education and so little change?  How can we assess the relationship between American cities and the evolving systems of education within them?  This course will begin by surveying the history of metropolitan America after 1945.  We will then consider the development of urban education and situate schools within larger trends in American life.  The course will conclude by looking at various proposals for change, from those concerned with single classrooms to those that address entire districts.  

Informal course Description  
This course is designed to introduce you to the world of urban education.  Most folks feel they have an idea of what urban schools are like, whether from film, magazine exposes, or other pop culture references.  Urban often becomes a synonym for black and poor, a troubling assumption.  Even more problematic are assumptions that all city schools are struggling.  Our job this semester is to figure out the history behind these assumptions and to figure out how we might participate in changing urban schools. 

Books:   
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz : Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, New York: Verso, 1991. 
Fine, Michelle. Framing Dropouts. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991. 
Foote, Donna. Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America. New York: Vintage, 2008. 
Kozol, Jonathan. The Shame of the Nation : The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. 1st ed. New York: Crown Publishers, 2005. 
Meier, Deborah. The Power of Their Ideas : Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. 
Payne, Charles. So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. 
Self, Robert O. American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland, Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003. 
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis : Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Princeton Studies in American Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. 
Tough, Paul. Whatever It Takes : Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008. 
Tyack, David B. The One Best System : A History of American Urban Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974. 

Coursepack:  
Beauregard, Robert A. When America Became Suburban. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. 
Countryman, Matthew. Up South : Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia, Politics and Culture in Modern America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 
Dougherty, Jack. More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 
Haberman, Martin. "Unemployment Training: The Ideology of Nonwork Learned in Urban Schools." Phi Delta Kappan (1997). 
Kantor, Harvey. "In Retrospect: David Tyack's One Best System." Reviews in American History 29, no. 2 (2001): 319-327.

Kantor, Harvey, 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. 
Katz, Michael B. The Price of Citizenship : Redefining America's Welfare State. 1st ed. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001. 
Sorkin, Michael. Variations on a Theme Park : The New American City and the End of Public Space. 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992. 
Traub, James "What No School Can Do." New York Times, January 16 2000. 
Wilson, William J. When Work Disappears : The World of the New Urban Poor. 1st ed. New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random House Inc., 1996.

 
Week One: Some perspectives on cities and schools    
How did Americans end up with the urban school systems that presently exist?  What is the common perception of urban schools?  How can we begin situate schools within the larger context post-1945 history?     
Readings:  Katz (from Price of Citizenship); Wilson (when Work Disappears); Traub

The Playing Field:

Week Two: Why do we have the cities we have?  What is the relationship between work, residence, and urban life?  What is the role of race?  Of class? How have cities changed in the past fifty years?   
Reading:  Sugrue  
 
Week Three: How do cities “work”? What role does the built environment play?  How is power distributed across the urban landscape?   
Reading:   Davis; Sorkin (excerpts)   
 
Week Four:  Chocolate City and Vanilla Suburbs  
What is the relationship between cities and suburbs?  
Reading:   Self ; Beauregard (excerpt)   
 
Week Five:  The Origins of Urban Education  
For the next two weeks, we’ll look at some of the ways historians of education have assessed schools in American cities.  Your objective is to measure how well they integrate the themes from urban history.    
Reading:  Tyack; Kantor  
 
Week Six:  Post WWII Urban Education  
Reading:  Kantor/Brenzel; Dougherty (excerpt) Countryman (excerpt)

The Players  
Week Seven:  Students   
Reading:  Kozol; (film: I am a Promise)

We will also review the ethnographies you’ve been reading and the experiences you’ve had so far in the classroom. 

Week Eight:  Students and Systems  
Reading:   Fine; (The Wire: Season Four)   
 
Week Nine:  Teachers 
Who are these teachers?  Why don’t they stay?   
Reading:  Foote; (film excerpts: The First Year)

Week Ten: Student Project Check-in Reports 

Making Change  
This next section will be devoted to mechanisms of change: how can urban schools be improved? What ideas have worked, not worked, or not been tried?  

Week Eleven: Classrooms  
How can change begin in a classroom?  Why are there so many terrific teachers in the city and so many bad schools?    
Reading:  Payne; Haberman;  
Guest Panel   

Week Thirteen:  Schools 
Readings The Power of Their Ideas; Payne 

Week Fourteen:  On a large scale – Choice and Alternatives   
Reading: Tough; RFA report on charter schools in Philadelphia    
 
Week Fifteen: Presentation of Student Projects 

Assessments 
Take home midterm (10%)   
Two weeks before the midterm, you will receive a pair of newspaper articles; one will be an editorial, the other an extended essay.   In two essays (4-6 pages), you will assess the author’s beliefs about urban education and the quality of their thesis, offer some suggestions for how they might have offered a more nuanced argument, and generally reflect on whatever distortions you see within the two pieces.  

Ethnography Assignment     (20%)   
Each of you will be read an additional ethnography on education.  In your essay (5-7 pages) you will address the major themes of this book and consider the theoretical framework employed by the researcher.  You will also prepare a brief presentation for the class. Your presentation should consist of a brief overview of your book, what you found important about it, what new ideas it provoked; you should also prepare a one-page guide to the book. (I will post an example).

Mini-internship (20%)   
As part of the course work, you will be involved in the local school district.  The shape of student involvement will be determined later but options include tutoring, attending a single class once a week, or assisting in an after-school program.  You will turn in two papers -- a midterm report (3-5 pages) and a final report (6-8 pages) that detail your impressions of the school.   Your paper should be a way of making sense of our readings and discussions in a real world context. 

Research Proposal (20%)  
Based on your impressions of the school, you will create a research proposal for future study.  In 5 to 8 pages, you will lay out a proposal for future research on urban schools.  The paper should identify a single issue, discuss the literature surrounding this issue, and then provide the intellectual framework you will use to study it. You should use the readings from the course as a way to unravel the different approaches (20% of grade)

Final Exam (10%)   
In a short essay, I would like for you to write a short letter about what you hope to remember as a citizen, scholar, or teacher about urban education.  What would you recommend a new teacher have with them – in their head and in their heart – as they entered an urban classroom?  How would translate the scholarship on urban education into a short recommendation of things to read and reflect upon?   

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 urban 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.

List of Ethnographies  
Bettie, J. (2003). Women without class: Girls, race, and identity. 
Berkeley & LA:  University of California. 
Brantlinger, Ellen A. Dividing classes : how the middle class negotiates and rationalizes school advantage. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003. 
———. The politics of social class in secondary school : views of affluent and impoverished youth. New York ; London: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1993.  
Corsaro, William A. "We're friends, right?" : inside kids' cultures. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2003.  
Eckert, Penelope, Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in High School.  NY: Teachers College Press, 1989.   
Ferguson, A. (2001). Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black 
Masculinity. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. 
Heath, Shirley B. Ways with Words, 1983.   
Jackson, Philip, Life in Classrooms, 1968.    
Lareau, Annette.  Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary School.  NY: Falmer Press, 1989.  
MacLeod, Jay. Ain't no makin' it : aspirations and attainment in a low-income neighborhood. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.  
Nespor, Jan.  Tangled Up in School. Erlbaum Assoc, 1997.   
Ogbu, John U. Black American students in an affluent suburb : a study of academic disengagement, Sociocultural, political, and historical studies in education. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 2003. 
———. The next generation; an ethnography of education in an urban neighborhood. New York,: Academic Press, 1974.  
Perlstein, Linda. Not much, just chillin' : the hidden lives of middle schoolers. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.  
Perlstein, Linda, Tested. 2007.   
Taylor, Denny. Family literacy : young children learning to read and write. Exeter, N.H.: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983.  
———. Toxic literacies : exposing the injustice of bureaucratic texts. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996.  
Taylor, Denny, and Catherine Dorsey-Gaines. Growing up literate : learning from inner-city families. Portsmouth, N. H.: Heinemann, 1988.  
Thorne, Barrie. Gender play : girls and boys in school. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993.  
Rose, Mike, Possible Lives, 1997.   
Tobin, Wu, and Davidson. Preschool in three cultures. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 19 
Valdés, G. (1996). Con respeto: Bridging the distances between culturally diverse families and schools. New York: Teachers College Press. 
Weis, Lois, and Michelle Fine. Beyond silenced voices : class, race, and gender in United States schools. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.  
Willis, Paul E. Learning to labor : how working class kids get working class jobs. Morningside ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.