Business Essentials For Urban School Administrators

This course is designed to introduce candidates to the whole spectrum of traditional human resources’ responsibilities and major functions and to grapple with the organizational challenges that have emerged in urban school districts due to poorly functioning HR systems, and challenges with labor and reactionary management. Topics will include intentional recruitment of a diverse workforce, effective candidate screening and selection processes, onboarding, performance management and evaluation, compensation, career progression and employee and labor relations. Additionally, candidates will learn how to transform an urban school or district’s human resource management function into a more strategic and integrated component of a district’s overall approach to improving student achievement. Applicable Course Fees can be found at https://my.davenport.edu/financial-aid/how-much-does-du-cost/tuition-and-fees. Prerequisite(s): Admission to the Master of Urban Education program

In this course, candidates will be introduced to successful reform strategies and best practices that address how time, resources, and responsibilities can be allocated in urban schools and districts. Candidates will determine how each of these strategies can be managed politically and communicated to stakeholders. Exploration of strategic frameworks including strategic decision making and analysis of complex systems, structures and problems from multiple stakeholder perspectives will take place from a socio-economic and a socio-political context. Applicable Course Fees can be found at https://my.davenport.edu/financial-aid/how-much-does-du-cost/tuition-and-fees. Prerequisite(s): Admission to the Master of Urban Education program

Candidates will examine a series of best practices in school budgeting, which clearly outline steps to developing a budget that best aligns resources with student achievement goals. Urban school and district budgets will be evaluated with a specific focus on coherence and optimizing student achievement with available resources. The role of the school and district’s instructional priorities as a guide for decision-making will be evaluated with a specific focus on making budgetary decisions in the context of increased numbers of diverse and impoverished candidates, dwindling state and federal resources and the redistribution of public school educational funds to private and charter school management organizations. Applicable Course Fees can be found at https://my.davenport.edu/financial-aid/how-much-does-du-cost/tuition-and-fees. Prerequisite(s): Admission to the Master of Urban Education program

In this course, candidates will learn the essentials of performance management, specifically how to judge the performance of individual schools, decide which are effective enough to continue supporting, and how to use data to determine whether to shore up struggling schools or create new ones. Candidates will reflect upon the literature on government agencies and businesses that have shifted to performance-based accountability and management, learn why traditional compliance-based systems and structures are not suitable to achieve breakthrough student achievement in urban schools, and examine the necessary technical, cultural and staff capacities in performance-based organizations. Candidates will critique the differences between the leadership and management skills, competencies and dispositions needed in performance-based organizations compared to those valued in compliance-based organizations and the implications surrounding tenure, legacy systems of promotion and seniority. Applica