• PUBP 768: Reform of Educational Reform
• Semester: Fall 2003
• Professor: Dr. Arthur Melmed
• Syllabus

• Final Paper:
  • Paper - A brief review of K-12 assessment and "off-the-shelf" tests used
  • Class Presentation (ppt)

• Tyack, D.; & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
          University Press.
• Assigned Readings: List • Summaries (by Dr. Melmed)

• Several websites providing literature and information on educational spending, different viewpoints on various educational issues by different advocacy groups, current news on education-related issues and politics, and etc.

        While waiting for formal admission into the doctoral program, and after talking to Dr. Dunklee several times, I ended up choosing Policy as minor.  It became obvious that in order for me to make a meaningful contribution towards education reform, I needed some insights into education policy-making.  Once, it became clear to me that Policy was the way to go, I ran into the first road block.  The College of Education and Human Development did not offer any education policy related course.  They were working on putting together a coursework package for a minor in education policy.

        I started looking for policy courses in the School of Public Policy that focused on education.  Luckily, I came across this course.   It seemed the logical choice to start with for my minor.  Besides, this course was geared towards education policy, and specifically the chosen topic for this sememster was "Reform of Educational Reform".   It covered different elements of school system that have been targeted for reform for over a century, including but not limited to school-spending, class size and configuration, teacher-training, tracking/de-tracking, curriculum, and etc.   Furthermore, we went over different education policies and federal mandates including the NCLB.  This was my second semester and the second course in seminar-like setting, only this time I was sitting with colleagues who were pontential policy-geeks of the future.  The three main things I can enumerate getting out of this course were: (a) the revealation that "the averages do conceal as much as they reveal", (b) the numbers on average per-pupil spending and potential breakdown, and (c) the fact that most of the assessment tests used by the public school system(s) are developed by only few test developers who are also the providers of the textbooks used by the public school system(s).

        If I wrote this piece of reflections when I took this course, I might have written it differently.  However, after taking the other two education policy related courses, now offered by the College of Education and Human Development, i.e., EDUC 872 and EDUC 872 which offered educators' perspectives on education policy, and EDLE 803 which offered economists' perspectives on education policy, I can see where to put this course.  This course offered a bureaucratic perspective, where everything was seen through the lens of organizational efficiency.  The overwhelming message that came out of this course was that the current education system was performing reasonably well despite all the nuances and the distractions created by both economists and educators.

        [Click here] to see the list of competencies achieved in this course.