The issues with our country’s education system are far-reaching. This is certainly true when considering the ever present issues students in urban environments are subject to on a regular basis.
According to a report released by the RTI Action Network, some of the structural challenges that are most potent in urban settings are: persistently low student achievement, a lack of instructional coherence, inexperienced teaching staff, poorly functioning business operations, and low expectations of students.
In an editorial published in U.S. News and World Report, Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City Department of Education had this to say on the topic: “Too many educators today excuse teachers, principals, and school superintendents who fail to substantially raise the performance of low-income minority students by claiming that schools cannot really be held accountable for student achievement because disadvantaged students bear multiple burdens of poverty. The truth is that America will never fix poverty until it fixes its urban schools.”
The Urban Education doctoral program at IUPUI seeks to address these issues by properly equipping future superintendents, principals and educators.
According to the program overview, students will develop considerable understanding of the importance of being deeply engaged with the urban community, especially with those groups within the community that have experienced historical exclusion and marginalization.
In addition to providing a critically important, albeit non-traditional curriculum, the Urban Ed program has a commitment to community participation.
“Civic engagement is a very strong part of the program,” said program Director Jim Scheurich adding that there is a large emphasis on including the community in student’s efforts as opposed to just viewing them as mere research subjects.
”We’re a new program and we think we’re one of the best – a lot of universities have an urban education center or an institute, but they don’t have an urban education doctorate, we’re one of the very few who do this,” said Scheurich. He remarked that the majority of the students who enroll in the program are Black and have professional backgrounds in education. “It’s very unusual for a doctoral program to have the majority of the students be people of color,” he said.
Scheurich, a former Texas A&M University professor, shared that another thing that makes this program so unique is the focus on regularly injecting honest discourse on social ills such as sexism, race and racism, homophobia, and issues surrounding disability, language, and culture into the classroom. He said that typically, university programs may only offer one course that explores those types of topics and that’s an issue that he feels adds to the lack of cultural understanding from educators who find themselves working in an urban setting.
Nathaniel Williams, who is currently enrolled in the doctoral program and holds a master’s in education psychology, was chosen in the first of the three cohorts that have matriculated through the program. Williams said that he realized the Urban Education Ph.D. was something that could help further develop him professionally.
While substituting in the Indianapolis Public Schools system, he noticed that there was a disconnect in the classroom between students and teachers. “Working in the classroom made me realize how limited my reach was,” he said. “I knew I needed to go back to school to make my impact (on students) much larger.”
Scheurich said, “In many university classrooms there is a reluctance to address these issues straight on. That’s not true for us. We have very open honest intense conversations about, for example, racism in school and discipline disparities.
“We can’t avoid those things if we want to be committed to creating an equitable education system,” Scheurich said.
For more information on the Urban Education Ph.D. visit education.iupui.edu.
