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This course will examine four popular alternatives to traditional K-12 and postsecondary education in the United States. These are homeschooling, boarding schools, charter schools, and magnet schools. We shall spend a couple of weeks constructing a conceptual framework for understanding these alternatives, and then spend a couple of weeks on each area. I have designed the course to be useful to both those with a focus on K-12 schooling and those more concerned with postsecondary education. Class activities will vary from day to day, ranging from lectures to discussions to student presentations. Students will be active participants in the course. You need to ask questions, raise issues, and otherwise contribute to an informed and substantive classroom discussion. I expect you to do all of the reading on time. For the course to work, you need to read and think seriously about what you’ve been reading. Your grade will be based on several short (3-5 pages) written assignments, a more extended research paper, and your presentation of the research paper to the class. I shall also take into account the quality of your overall participation. I am not obligated to accept late assignments. I shall accept serious attempts to rewrite papers with no penalty. In the shorter papers, you should demonstrate that you understand the major issues at stake in the particular area. Your paper should be significantly more than simply a summary of the reading. The papers should be critical and analytical, searching for points of contention or agreement among different authors, identifying crucial theoretical and empirical points, and discussing the broader implications. I shall talk more about this in class. Your research paper should be presented in a style suitable for submission to a scholarly journal. It should follow the general format and structure of a research paper in your field, including a title page, abstract, and bibliography. You should turn it in on both disk and as hard copy. A one‑page proposal of your research paper is due on February 21, 2005. I shall talk about all of this more in class.
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