Unique Features of the Program
The GW Education Policy Program offers several unique advantages to its
students. These include: proximity to national and international
policy making, a distinguished faculty with extensive real-world policy
experience, programs that provide breadth and depth, classes that not only
convey understanding but develop policy skills, students who are unusually
well connected because of their jobs, and extensive accommodations for
employed students.
Proximity:
Our campus is a few blocks from the White House and
The World Bank, and within three miles of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department
of Education, most other federal agencies, and more than 100 major professional
associations involved in education policy, such as the National Governors
Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the National
Education Association. No other education policy program in the country
offers its students comparable access to:
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Hearings, meetings, and consultations of these organizations;
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Internships in these organizations;
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Jobs with these organizations while engaged in graduate study and following
graduation.
Faculty: The faculty have extensive and diverse experience
in the education research and policy arenas -- more than 60 years experience
in senior positions with the U.S. Congress, U.S. Department of Education,
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the National Science Foundation, National
Education Association, and the American Council on Education. They
understand the realities of education policy; they have extensive contacts
within the national and international policy arena; and they consult with
numerous agencies and organizations in the United States and abroad. The
faculty also have a reputation for challenging, mentoring, and championing
their students. They are sincerely concerned about preparing better
leaders for the next millennium.
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Dr. Elaine El-Khawas
is the former Vice President for Policy Analysis
and Research at the American Council on Education, and has been a consultant
to the World Bank, OECD, UNESCO, and numerous colleges and universities
in the U.S. and abroad.
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Dr. Mary Hatwood Futrell
is a former President of the National Education
Association, a former President of Education International, and the current
Dean of GW's Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
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Dr. Gregg Jackson
is a former Senior Analyst for the Office of Technology
Assessment at the U.S. Congress, a former Senior Staff Officer at the National
Academy of Sciences, and a former Director of Research at the International
City Management Association.
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Dr. Joel Gomez
is the Associate Dean for Research of the Graduate
School of Education and Human Development, Director of GW's Institute for
Education Policy Studies, and previously served as the founding Director
of GW's Center for the Study of Language Education which operates the U.S.
Department of Education's National Clearinghouse on English Language Acquisition..
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Dr. Yas Nakib is a former Fellow at the Consortium for Policy Research
in Education and faculty member at the University of Deleware.
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Dr. Iris Rotberg
is a former Program Director at the National Science
Foundation; a former Principal Investigator for the House Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology; and a former Assistant Director at the
National Institute of Education.
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Dr. James Williams, of GW's International Education Program,
collaborates with the Education Policy doctoral concentration in International
Education. He formerly held an appointment at the Harvard Institute
for International Development.
For more detailed information on the faculty members, click Faculty
Programs:
Both the masters and doctoral programs are designed
to provide students with a broad understanding of the contexts, processes,
and consequences of education policies. They introduce theory, examine
current practice, and anticipate the future. The goal is to prepare
leaders who can help this country and other countries progress toward educational
excellence and equity in the next millennium. All students are expected
to develop expertise in four areas:
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Contexts of Policy: Education policy is rooted in the social
context of a nation. The core ideals of a nation drive and constrain
its policy. History offers explanations of how current educational
practices came to be and hints of how those practices might be changed.
Economic success is essential to pay for high quality wide-spread education,
and high quality wide-spread education fuels economic success. High
level policies in a democracy are decided by the convoluted and imperfect
means of politics.
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The Policy Cycle: There is far more to the policy process
than policy making. The impetus for policy comes from evolving values,
ideas, problems, and opportunities. A policy may be developed from
intuition, modeled on existing policies, or engineered from precepts about
human and social behavior. Policy analysis assesses the potential
advantages and disadvantages of one or more policy proposals.
High level education policies are adopted through the political process,
but low-level policies are adopted administratively by school district
personnel, school principals, and even teachers. After a policy is
adopted, its implementation must be managed carefully to achieve success.
Program evaluation assesses whether a policy has been implemented as intended,
whether it is having the intended effects, and whether it is having unintended
positive or negative side effects. Adopted policies are usually subsequently
reconsidered, either early on if implementation runs into problems or years
later when it appears a policy has outlived its usefulness.
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Research and Evaluation Methodology: Quantitative and qualitative
research and evaluation methods can be valuable tools at several points
in the policy cycle. They can determine the extent and causes of
problems. They provide an understanding of human and social behavior
that can be used in the development of policies. They can help analyze
of the potential of proposed policies. They can monitor the
implementation of new policy. They also can assess the impacts of
implemented policies. Despite these potential benefits, good research
and evaluation may will fall on deaf ears if it does not address the concerns
of policy makers and is not communicated in language that they easily understand.
In addition, without cautious reading, incompetent or duplicitous
research and evaluation can deceive those involved in the policy process.
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Substantive Area of Education or Training: Education and training
policies span all domains of knowledge and skill, all stages of human development,
all levels of education and training institutions, and both the public
and private sectors. It is useful to have some knowledge of the full
spectrum of education and training, and important to develop expertise
in a least one area. The six faculty members together have a broad
range of expertise, and if students have other interests they are encouraged
to consult with other faculty members at GW, faculty members at other local
universities, and the many expert professionals in the Washington D.C.
area.
The Education Policy doctoral
program offers a concentration
in International Education
. This option is provided in conjunction
with GW's International Education program. The concentration replaces
some of the program's normally required courses with new ones on international
education policy. For more information, return to the home
page of this site and click on "Doctoral Programs" near the bottom of the
page. The Education Policy master's program currently allows four
elective courses, which students can use, if they wish, to take courses
in international education.
Classes
are generally taught as seminars in which students discuss
the strengths and weaknesses of the readings, their implications for education,
and other sources that address the same issues from different perspectives.
The purpose is not to memorize the texts, but rather to use them as tools
to think critically about how education operates and how it might be improved.
Exams are rarely given in the classes; instead students are usually assigned
a few short written or oral presentations and a research paper. Some
of the faculty will allow students to propose modified assignments tailored
to their individual professional objectives. The EDUC 214 class (History
of American Education Reforms) has helped research a book that will soon
be published. Each EDUC 281 class (Program Evaluation) plans and
sometimes conducts a real program evaluation. Several students have
prepared papers for other classes that subsequently have been published.
The Education Policy master's level classes generally have 10-20 students.
The doctoral level classes average 8-12 students. The research methods
courses (EDUC 295, 302, and 307) usually have somewhat larger numbers of
students. The master's degree courses are described at Master's
Classes
The doctoral degree courses are described at
Doctoral Classes
Students: The diverse student body comes from across the
nation and the globe. Both the master's program and doctoral program
each have 25-30 students. More than half of the students work full-time
and most of the others work part-time in organizations involved with education
policy. This enriches the discussions in the classes and seminars, provides
students with unusual access to the inside information and events of Washington,
and offers unparalleled opportunities to learn of internship and job opportunities.
The following are the positions that some of the students have held when
undertaking their graduate study.
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Center for Equity and Excellence in Education--Research Assistant;
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Academy for Educational Development--Program Associate;
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American Institutes for Research--Research Associate;
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National Clearinghouse on English Language Acquisition--Research Assistant;
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Westat--Research Associate;
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The World Bank--Research Associate;
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Hamilton Fish National Institute on School and Community Violence--Research
Associate;
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Council for Exceptional Children--Program Associate;
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The McKenzie Group--Research Associate.
Accommodations for Working Students:
Both the masters
and doctoral program are designed to accommodate the needs of working students
and to utilize their experience. All classes and seminars are held
in the late afternoons and evenings of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
The classes meet just once a week for two hours. All faculty have
voice mail and e-mail. Students are offered free e-mail through the
university. Students often seek advice and guidance from the
faculty by phone or e-mail. When students want to meet with faculty, appointments
are arranged at mutually convenient times. There is a program listserv
that allows faculty and students to send e-mail messages to everyone in
the program. This allows easy sharing of notices about events, internships,
and jobs openings that may be of wide interest. The main GW library
is open on Saturdays and Sundays. It has subscriptions to several
proprietary full-text databases of professional publications that can be
accessed from anywhere through the Web. GW has extensive computer
laboratories--some open 24 hours per day--for students who do not otherwise
have access to the WWW.
Most of the Education Policy Program courses and seminars allow students
substantial discretion in the topics of their research projects, papers,
and presentations. With permission of the instructor and work supervisor,
students sometimes build upon their work products to prepare their course
assignments and they sometimes use their course assignments to enhance
their work products.
[Last updated Sept. 17, 2005]
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