Education Policy and Leadership Courses

EDLD 607 Seminar in Governance and Ethics
3 Credits
Examination of how intentional school and district governance serves system transformation. Viewing ethics through an equity lens, leaders develop policies and practices that eliminate systems of advantage and disadvantage thereby closing the opportunity and achievement gaps present in their schools and systems.

EDLD 610 State and local policy
3 Credits
Analysis of the social, economic, political, and technological forces that shape educational policy at the national, state, and local levels. Developing school district policies and assessing their consequences.

EDLD 624 Leading for Equity
3 Credits
This course is designed to provide advanced exposure to current research and practice in leading for equity and inclusion within professional educational settings and a strong conceptual foundation in leadership.

EDLD 625 Surveys, interviews, focus groups
3 Credits
Students gain practical experience in the collection and analysis of social science information through the design and implementation of surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

EDLD 626 Social and cultural foundations of education
3 Credits
Examines education in US society from sociological, cultural, and structural perspectives with a focus on inequity and the intersecting roles of race, language, class, gender, and ability-disability.

EDLD 631 Education, Immigration, & Language
3 Credits
Historical and current approaches to meeting the needs of English learners in the US. The focus is on federal, state, and local policies that support English learners' acquisition of English, as well as research on effective programs and practices to ensure educational equity and opportunity.

EDLD 632 Educational Policy Analysis
3 Credits
The purpose of this course is to introduce graduate students to the craft of education policy analysis.

EDLD 642 Survey of U.S. Education Policy
3 Credits
A graduate-level class designed to facilitate students’ understanding of the major policy areas and debates in contemporary U.S. public K-12 education systems; designed for graduate students who seek to become education policymakers, school and system leaders, policy analysts and researchers.

EDLD 643 Evidence-based decision-making
3 Credits
Introduces basic concepts of evidence-based decision making.

EDLD 644 Learning Organizations
3 Credits
Four theories of organizational learning are explored: structural frame, human resource, political, and symbolic.

EDLD 651 Introductory Educational Data Science
3 Credits
Introduces students to the fundamentals of statistical computing for data science. Introductory programming, data wrangling, data visualization, reproducible research.

EDLD 652 Data Visualization
3 Credits - Prerequisites: EDLD 651 with a grade of C- or better
Best practices in data visualization for social data science communication. Visual perception, color, uncertainty, and communication mediums.

EDLD 653 Functional Programming for Educational Data Science
3 credits - Prerequisites: EDLD 651 with a grade of C- or better
Foundations of functional programming for data science. Function writing and iteration emphasized.

EDLD 655 Analysis of teaching and learning 
3 Credits
Increases understanding of theories of learning and methodologies of teaching through analysis of relationship between teaching and learning.

EDLD 684 Education Policy and Leadership Master of Science Seminar
3 Credits
Required course for the Master of Science in Education Policy and Leadership (MS-EPoL) to introduce students into the program, build community within the cohort, develop a shared sense of purpose and direction in the program, and learn foundational core concepts of education policy and leadership.

EDLD 685 Education Policy and Leadership Master’s Project
3 Credits
The purpose of this course is to scaffold students through the development and completion of their Educational Policy and Leadership master's capstone project. The capstone project is a discrete empirical examination of a problem of practice. The course also covers career planning and presentation skills.

EDLD 696 Professional Writing 1
3 Credits
Covers foundational knowledge of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) writing style as well as how to synthesize research for academic purposes.

EDUC 612 Social Science Research Design
3 Credits
Overview of qualitative, quantitative, and single-subject research methods. Emphasis on introducing students to considerations, issues, and techniques of social science research design.

EDUC 620 Program Evaluation I
3 credits
Introduction to program evaluation design and methods.

EDUC 621 Program Evaluation II
3 credits - Prerequisite EDUC 620
Implementation and completion of the evaluation design defined in Program Evaluation I.

EDUC 641 Applied Statistics in Education and Human Services I 
3 credits 
This course provides a first introduction to quantitative data analysis in education and the social sciences. It is part of a three course sequence intended to provide a toolkit of statistical concepts, methods and their implementation to producers of applied research in education and other social sciences. The course is organized around the principle that research design depends in part on researchers’ substantive questions and their quantitative data available to answer these question. In this introductory course, we will focus on describing categorical and continuous data and quantifying the relationship between categorical and continuous data. Students will form a solid foundation for frequentist, inferential statistics (and some of critiques of this model). The course seeks to blend a conceptual, mathematical and applied understanding of basic statistical concepts. At the core of our pedagogical approach is the belief that students learn statistical analysis by doing statistical analysis. This course (or substitute) is a pre-requisite for EDUC 643.

EDUC 643 Applied Statistics in Education and Human Services II
3 credits 
How closely linked are students’ scores on standardized tests to their socio-economic status? Do individuals with disordered eating behaviors have lower self esteem? Applied data analysis can answer these and other sorts of questions in educational, social and behavior research. This course is the second in a three course sequence intended to provide a toolkit of statistical concepts, methods and their implementation to producers of applied research in education and other social sciences. The course is organized around the principle that research design depends in part on researchers’ substantive questions and their quantitative data available to answer these question. In this intermediate course, we will focus on applying the General Linear Model to Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis. Students will progress from bivariate to multiple regression, developing an understanding of the associated assumptions of these models and tools to solve instances in which those assumptions are unmet. The course seeks to blend a conceptual, mathematical and applied understanding of basic statistical concepts. At the core of our pedagogical approach is the belief that students learn statistical analysis by doing statistical analysis. EDUC 641 (or a similar introductory statistics course) is a pre-requisite as is a basic familiarity with a statistical programming language (preferably R). This course (or substitute) is a pre-requisite for EDUC 645.