Section 17 Course Description

• Has the Supreme Court reconfigured American Education?
• Can failing schools be turned around?
• Are undocumented immigrants entitled to public education?
• Is privatization of schools the hope of the future?
• Do teachers unions stymie school reform?
• Can Zero Tolerance policies violate students’ rights? 

If questions like these interest you, this may be the course for you!  We will examine these and other controversial issues related to K-12 education.  We will learn to argue these issues from both sides in order to establish our own informed positions.

We will use four books in this class:

Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Educational Issues, edited by John Wm. Noll

Critical Issues in Education: Dialogues and Dialectics (8^th Edition), by Jack L. Nelson, Stuart Palonsky, and Mary Rose McCarthy.

They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (2^nd Edition), by Gerald Craff and Cathy Birkenstein.