PhD Handbook: School Organization & Education Policy
The purpose of the School Organization and Educational Policy (SOEP) emphasis is to train future scholars and professional stakeholders in education policymaking. As such, the SOEP emphasis has several interrelated goals.
The first goal is to teach students the concepts, language and development of education policymaking across a variety of settings. These settings include federal, state or local government agencies, district or school-level contexts, higher education institutions, non-governmental agencies and professional constituency groups, and many other organizational decision-making arenas.
A second goal is to provide the necessary tools for evaluation and analysis of policies and programs through a series of core courses and an applied methods sequence.
The third goal is to expose students to a variety of critical topics and approaches to education policymaking, including education reform, school finance, social and cultural considerations, legal issues in policy formation, leadership, organizational change, communication and media strategies, and other topics.
Finally, a fourth goal of the SOEP Emphasis is to provide relevant coursework for graduate students in other areas in the School of Education or elsewhere in the University, who wish to understand, influence and shape education policy.
Course Requirements
In addition to the Ph.D. program core courses and research methodology requirements, SOEP students complete 32 units of coursework in the SOEP emphasis area. As part of these 32 units, SOEP students are required to take the following three core SOEP courses:
- 220* - Concepts & Methods of Policy Analysis (4)
- 223 - Education & Social Policy (4)
- 227* - Program Evaluation & Education (4)
Suggested additional courses to fill out the 32-unit emphasis requirement include:
- 221 - Culture & Social Organization of Schools (4)
- 222 - School Change & Educational Reform (4)
- 232* - Urban Education Policy (4)
- 224A* - Economics of Education (4)
- 224B* - Education Finance Policy (4)
- 225 - Education Policy & the Law (4)
- 226 - Culture & Social Organization of Higher Education (4)
- 228* - Politics & Governance of Education (4)
- 229* - Language Policy (4)
- 230* - Special Topics in Education Policy (4)
- 295* - Advanced Topics in Methodology (4)
Students (in consultation with their advisors) are encouraged to have two of their SOEP emphasis courses taken outside of Education, in disciplines such as Sociology, Political Science, History, Psychology, Law, or others.
Methodology Core Courses
Students in the SOEP emphasis are expected to take EDU 204A, Quantitative Methods in Educational Research: Analysis of Correlation and Design and Education, as part of their research methods requirement.
* Any course marked with an asterisk is a proposed course with a tentative course number. Proposed courses are offered as sections of EDU 292, Special Topics in Education, until they have completed the approval process.