EDLP 380

Course Reflection

Professor Tammy Kolbe led EDLP 380 as a deep dive into the historical context and present ramifications of Inequality in Education. At the beginning of the semester, we focused on building common terminology and frameworks by which to evaluate inequality and inequity. As a class, we explored terms like "equality of opportunity", and examined existing frameworks like a Meritocracy structure or Fair Equality of Opportunity. We discussed topics ranging from housing segregation, ability tracking in schools, school financing and the distribution of teacher quality. The thread of inequality in American educational systems wove through each individual topic, and informed how we evaluated and analyzed different institutions impacting children and families.

Our assigned texts were both varied and informative. For our main texts, Professor Tammy Kolbe chose three books. The first, Educational inequality and school finance: Why money matters? by Bruce Baker, led the class through an overview of inequality of school funding and budgeting. Our second text, Our Kids by Putnam, allowed us to explore the way class, race and demographic can impact a child's education. This text encouraged robust discussion of how opportunity was limited to certain groups of children, and expanded conversation around how this phenomena ties to Vermont's communities. The third text we dove into was The Color of Law by Rothstein, which explained both implicit and explicit segregation and racism in the United States, and how housing policy impacts educational and societal outcomes. I am choosing to highlight these texts in my course reflection because the three were a fantastic blend of modern narrative writing with education policy and finance data. Beyond thse texts, we analyzed data from states around the country, examined the historically-relevant Coleman Report, and read recent News articles about the inequality in schools across communities. These texts drove complicated, complex conversations in class, and challenged members to rethink their own understandings of equality and opportunity.

In this class, we were given multiple opportunities to apply class content to personal projects and interests. While there were several major projects, including an Applied Project on a topic of our choice and an Auto-Ethnography on our individual past experiences, my favorite task was presenting to the class. My group was given the complex task of analyzing and communicating how teacher quality contributes to existing inequality (presentation below). My team led the entire class (3 hours) of group discussion, analyzing data and graphs and presenting historical context. Given my personal interest in educator professional development, this topic felt both relevant to my personal interests and crucial for the continued push towards equality of educational opportunity. My team shared data on why high-quality teachers matter for student outcomes, the current distribution of high-quality teachers throughout the country, and future policy recommendations.