Jeremy B. Landa
I. Unit Overview
The unit will be an approximately four-week unit that will focus on the economic concepts of costs and revenues.
- Week 1: Race, socioeconomics, and privilege
- Week 2: Contextualizing why schools are this way: Federal and Connecticut Court Cases
- Week 3: Funding of schools: Inventory of Resources, Revenues and Costs
- Week 4: Solving the Problem
II. Overarching Class Essential Question
- Should the design of all public schools focus on integration, by race and socioeconomic status, irrespective of funding?
III. Unit Specific Essential Questions Based on Class Content
- For AP Microeconomics: How are revenues collected, how are these revenues distributed to cover costs, and how does that reflect the market structure of individual districts in the public school system?
- Sociology: Does racial and socioeconomic diversity hurt the culture of a school?
- Civics/Government: Does and should government attempt to create equitable outcomes in society? In other words, are taxes worth levying and when are taxes unfair?
- Civics/Government: How can the powers given to our judicial system impact citizens on an everyday basis and how can individual citizens change the behaviors of those in charge?
IV. Standard Alignment
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.7 Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.
V. Enduring Learning from Unit
As a result of a student working through this unit, they will gain the following:
- Understand that the reform movement for education is one that is desperately trying to improve outcomes for students by focusing on the resource inputs (land, labor, and capital) with less discussion about integrating students racially and economically.
- Evaluate how fields such as mathematics, economics, business, law, and government are frameworks that can shed light on issues like the impact of segregation on students' academic performance.
- Compare and contrast criteria created by politicians for integrating schools and questioning whether this is more effective than increasing funding for schools with more students that provide services to higher percentages of low-income individuals.
- Interpret if the American legal system often mirrors societal flaws – equity of schooling is currently not perceived as anything but a financial issue. The courts reflect this trend of compensatory education over integrated education.
- Synthesize information from public schooling systems spending and develop a coherent policy proposal for policy-makers to help us better understand schools as a business and schools as economic reflections of societal goals.
VI. Students will be able to:
- Define privilege and the impact of privilege on societal constructs that are social, racial, economic, or political
- Explain the four factors of production in schools (land, labor, capital, entrepreneurship)
- Evaluate the inputs in schools and the expected output from schools
- Evaluate costs and revenues
- Evaluate fixed and variable costs
- Explain the economic theory of marginal thinking and calculate marginal costs and revenues
- Utilize accounting and economics practices and methods to report total revenues and total costs.
- Evaluate how total costs and revenues relate with average total, variable and fixed costs help us understand different businesses
- Assess the efficiency and equity of a school system
- Appraise current budgets through an economic and legal framework to communicate successes and failures to government policy makers and impact their future decisions