I registered for Professor Battenfeld’s WR150 course titled “Civil Rights and Education” because I had a lot to say about my experience growing up in Arizona’s public education system. When I approached the final research paper, I wanted to find a way to balance my own experience with my hope to research something new. I found that research on the relationship between economic recession and public education was somewhat lacking. Having never written about economics before, my undertaking to fill this gap definitely reaffirmed my love-hate relationship with writing. Nevertheless, this paper uses data from Arizona and Oklahoma comparatively during the Great Recession to explore the many links between education and recession and their civil rights implications.
MARY LULLOFF is a rising sophomore at Boston University in the College of Arts and Sciences from Phoenix, Arizona. Her major is undeclared because she is interested in too many things to decide. Mary would like to thank Professor Battenfeld for her investment in this paper through its many iterations (and for the extension). She would also like to thank her friend Vera for her ruthless but much-needed editing.