This course applies Organizational Studies to education. Organizational Studies is a body of theory and research that uses common concepts and methods to examine all kinds of organizations, ranging from corporations to small businesses to government bureaucracies to militaries to prisons to social movements.

This course presents major theories in contemporary organizational studies and applies them to schools at both K-12 and post secondary tiers. Theories will be organized using Richard Scott's typology of "rational, natural, and open systems." Attention will be given to all three levels of analysis: macro, meso, and micro. A recurring theme will be to assess ways that schools are or are not unique kinds of organizations, or whether their structures and processes are generic or atypical of other kinds of organizations.

Ideas from organizational studies will be used to examine several policy domains in education, including student engagement, safe schools, student achievement, school variety, and school choice. The class will ponder whether certain educational policy issues tend to recur periodically, albeit in different garb; whether or not school reform is cyclical and recurring, whether reforms tend to fix clear problems or are often mostly symbolic in character.