DC Summer Scholars Program

Session Details

July 1 - July 26, 2025
T/Th: 6:30 PM to 10:00 PM EST
Sat: 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM EST

Course Description

Like few other areas of public policy, the COVID crisis has placed a focused lens on America’s K-12 school systems. Americans have long cared about preserving a tradition of liberal arts education, seeing it as key to a free society of citizens with both the knowledge and virtue to sustain self-governance and to advance social order and prosperity. This graduate introduction to the philosophical debates that have shaped the goals and practices of American educational policies, curricula, and institutions will ask scholars to identify challenges and opportunities for revitalizing American educational systems and culture.

In a class that combines the philosophical with the latest public policy debates, Dr. Lindsey Burke will explore foundational concepts and their impact on current events. Using the works of Alexis de Tocqueville, Paolo Freire, John Dewey, Paul DiMaggio, Walter Powell, and Milton Friedman, this class will explore a variety of competing debates in philosophy of education, connecting these theories of human nature and the roles of society and government to educational curricula and policy. Students will be asked to question the role education policy, curricula, and institutions play in shaping culture and politics and promoting human progress in a diverse society founded on freedoms of religion, conscience, speech, and association. Students will also understand foundational research methods approaches and their use in education policy and program evaluation.

Concepts covered

• The philosophical underpinnings of today's education system
• How differing views of human nature affect the way we teach
• Current debates on roles of the public and government institutions
• Economics of education
• How do funding policies impact education policy
• Research methods in education policy

Faculty

Charmaine Yoest

Dr. Charmaine Yoest has a track record serving in many facets of political life including in the White House, on a presidential campaign, and leading a national nonprofit. Now on Capitol Hill, she serves as executive director of the House Values Action Team, working with Chairman Robert Aderholt. Previously, she served as a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, directing the domestic policy work of the national think tank voted most influential on policy issues three years running. Those issues included health care and welfare reform, education policy, family formation, women’s issues, and religious liberty. Yoest served in the White House as associate director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and also as the assistant secretary for public affairs at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where she provided leadership for the $1.3 trillion department’s public affairs programs, and coordination of strategic messaging across the 11 HHS Operating Divisions. She has appeared as a spokesperson on every major television network and cable outlet and has been published in the leading national publications. She has provided testimony in front of the United States Congress on multiple occasions. She is also the author of Mother in the Middle (HarperCollins), an examination of childcare policy.

Andy Smarick

Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing writer at The Dispatch, and a member of the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents. Previously, he served as the chair of the Maryland Higher Education Commission and as president of the Maryland State Board of Education. His other government experience includes serving as an aide in the White House Domestic Policy Counsel of President George W. Bush, legislative assistant at the U.S. House of Representatives, deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education, New Jersey deputy commissioner of education, and legislative aide at the Maryland state legislature. Smarick helped found a college-prep charter school for disadvantaged students and the National Alliance for Public Charter schools, and he was a founding board member of 50CAN. He has authored or edited four books, and his work has been published in outlets such as The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Education Week, and other outlets. He now writes regularly at his Substack, "Governing Right." Smarick received a bachelors of arts degree in government and politics, summa cum laude and with honors, from the University of Maryland and a Master of Public Management from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.