Blog Post 3

Introduction:

This is a unit my CT and I discussed to teach this semester at Riverside University High School in the

graduation-required senior Economics course. My CT taught a similar unit in the past, and he showed

me his own version of a DBQ (Document Based Question) that worked well with students but focused

on the tax costs of our criminal justice system, so I wanted to provide a set of texts that focuses on the

societal and individual costs of crime and the economic decision-making process that goes into participating

in illegal activity.

The students in these classes are all between 16 and 18, about 60% black, 20% latino, 10% asian and 10% white.

Students live within 6 miles of the school, but I have not found any major areas that they come from.

95% of Riverside students are on free or reduced lunch, so from that I would gather many are lower SES.

I only know this anecdotally, but many of my students come from single parent households or live with multiple

generations in one household.

These texts serve to show 1) Why people resort to crime? 2) How crime impacts us and our neighbors

economically and 3) How does the system of incarceration toll our society and who bears the brunt of

that?

Print Text 1: Alexander, M. (2020). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.Penguin Books. 

Summary: This book is a telling of the way the modern American criminal justice system has

maintained the racial control over Black men that has existed since slavery (and before). Written

around the time of Obama’s rise to presidency, Alexander argues that we are not in an era of true

“color blindness” as our country’s justice system still functions with racist principles and maintains

a “racial caste” system, a “New Jim Crow” era.

Quantitative: As someone who finds solace in the symbolic, I pulled 500 words from page 13

(see below for why) into Storytoolz and found the Flesh-Kincaid grade level score to be 8.5 and the

Automated Readability Index to be 9.0. These numbers surprised me slightly, so I pulled a section from

page 15 (again going for the ‘fun’ symbolism’) and found the scores to be 10.3 and 11.8 respectively.

This made a bit more sense as the vocabulary and length of sentences feel more demanding than

something an 8th grader might be able to handle confidently. The actual readability of this text does

not feel where the challenge will lie for my 12th graders.

Vocabulary: illusory, relegated, virulent, privilege (perhaps a word they would know, but worth discussion), reconciliation, vagrancy, caste (maybe another known word, but vital to the text), perpetuate 

Qualitative: Here is where I think this text will prove challenging. While it does provide the

necessary background information leading up to the present day (Chapter 1 begins with the end of the

Civil War and lays out the next 100 years), I don’t anticipate having the time or curricular space to read

the whole book.. The structure of the text does make the reading of the book easier by using subheadings

within chapters, a chronological telling of history, and a clear structure to the supporting evidence within

each chapter. 

Reader: Students will need some of the background knowledge coming in for the concepts of this book

to make sense or I can provide a summary to bolster their knowledge. One challenging element will be

dealing with the heavy themes of the book. I have confidence that many students will have some intuitive

sense of the validity of the argument laid forth from their experiences of life as these are things we see

and are represented in the news. RUHS is also like many urban public schools in which they suffer from

occasional criminal activity and proximity to it, so the realities of crime and the criminal justice system

may not be foreign. 

Task: My initial idea is/was to have the students read the whole book, primarily out of class. After talking

to my CT and seeing the assignments we do, this would be biting off more than we can chew. So, I plan

to use a graphic organizer such as KWL or Main Idea and Details to break down the complexity of thetopic. 

I want this book to function as an entry into having students think about the historicity of  modern

systems (here criminal justice), and begin to be aware of and critical of these social systems. Since the

students will be in an economics class, this will lead to some of the inquiry based-questions of “Do we

want to be spending money to do this?”This could be a text to provide a form of scaffolding to make this more accessible. 

Print Text 2: Miller, T., Cohen, M., Swedler, D., Ali, B., & Hendrie, D. (2021). Incidence and Costs of

Personal and Property Crimes in the USA, 2017. Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, 12(1), 24-54. doi:10.1017/bca.2020.36

Multimedia Text 1: Smith, R. (June 22, 2020). “Summer School 3: Profit and Cocaine”. In

Planet Money. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/22/894368822/summer-school-3-profit-cocaine

Summary:

Planet Money is a podcast series that tries to make economic concepts accessible and relatable to everyday life. This

episode focuses on drug dealing, and interviews one particular drug dealer, Freeway Rick. It talks about

the risks involved in illicit trade and the way this impacts prices, demand and elasticity. 

Quantitative: The transcript of the podcast seems to live somewhere between grades 4 and 6 on the

Flesch-Kincaid scale. I was somewhat surprised by this since I expected an NPR podcast to be closer to

middle school of highschool level, but I think some of this is due to the conversational nature of a

podcast. I don’t see much challenge arising from the sentence length, word choice, or total text length

(podcast is approx. 27 minutes of audio). 

Vocabulary: elastic demand, inelastic demand, barriers to entry, opportunity cost, bond

Qualitative: The subject matter makes this text an easy to approach one. It focuses on a single person’s

story, and the focus is them telling the listener about the intricacies of their profession. Students will

only have to be attentive to one story for the podcast.

This does not feel like a challenging listen/read based on needed prior knowledge or text structure.

Students will have learned about the economic concepts discussed in the podcast in prior units of the

course, so this should primarily be an application of those concepts into a specific example (drug dealing). 

The structure of an interview also allows for the host, Smith, to ask clarifying questions and inquire

further, which adds detail to statements made by Freeway Rick. The storytelling process goes along the

supply and task chain of drug dealing, making following the narrative simple as each section is

connected to the prior and following sections. 

The second half involving Stevenson and Wolfers does the work of directly connecting the concepts

to this topic. 

Example: “SMITH: We should make sure we clearly define our vocabulary words here - inelastic demand. When we talked about

demand last week, we said that for most products, when the price goes up, people buy less of the products. But there are a

few products where there's not an easy substitute, so that when the price goes up, people may buy a little less of it, but they

will keep buying the product - inelastic demand.WOLFERS: That's exactly right. The amount by which high prices scare people away is not very much. That's what

inelastic means.”

Reader: I think students will love this text! In high school, dealing with authority and infractions is a

reality of their everyday life. Students know what behaviors are socially acceptable and which are

deemed as transgressive. Much of the TV, music and movies students engage with has to do with illegal

behavior, so students are now being asked to look at illegal behaviors in an academic setting. What are

the impacts of illegalization? What motives drive individuals to take on risk? What are the costs and

benefits to this type of behavior? 

Task: The initial task of listening to a podcast, or reading the whole transcript, is an initial challenge.

Having students sit quietly and listen together for 27 minutes feels impossible.Thankfully, the excitement of a topic such as this should focus students’ attention.The task of connecting economic concepts to a real-world example should be achievable for them since

the podcast lays things out clearly and I have consistently reinforced the importance of seeing economicsas something to be thought about outside of the classroom. Being able to see the concepts learned in

school as assets to utilize outside of school is essential to apply their knowledge!

Multimedia Text 2: Ava Duvernay & Jason Moran. (2016) 13TH. Kandoo Films.

Multimedia Text 3: Brett Story. 2016. The Prison in 12 Landscapes. Oh Ratface Films. 

Culturally Relevant Text 1: No Justice No Peace: An Eyewitness Account of the Los Angeles Riots

[zine]. https://azinelibrary.org/approved/no-justice-no-peace-1.pdf

Summary: This is a zine that is a retelling of the 1992 LA Riots following the police brutality of Rodney King. It tells a personal chronology of the events hearing about the verdict on TV to the following days. Intermittently, the author fills in some opinions on the causes for injustice and desire for change.

Quantitative: This text ranks between 9 and 10 on the Flesch-Kincaid scale given different segments.

I do think there are a few challenging sentence structures here since it is a personal account of a tense

event, so some sentences do not fit traditional grammatical structure. Many sentences are broken into

two to three parts, so the reader must follow along closely to maintain the purpose of sentences. After a

paragraph or two of writing in this way, a reader could easily be left behind as to what is being said.

Much of the words used are readily available to students’ vocabulary, but there is the occasional

‘stumper’ word that could cause frustration.

Vocabulary: propagated, implemented, smoldering, retribution, sought, affluent, plight, Circle A

Qualitative: The level of qualitative difficulty in the process does not correspond to the quantitative score

of this text. While this is something I consider culturally-relevant and exciting for students, this text is a brick.This can not be delivered to students as a whole. Big blocks of text, a chronological narrative interrupted

by personal opinions and necessary prior knowledge of the LA Riots. The lack of headings to break up

the endless wall of text makes finding sections difficult. There are images to separate portions, but those

are not easy either. There is a level of irony involved with the image of the Anarco advertisement (pictured above)

that may go over students’ heads.

In addition, the physical quality of the text and images also make this a difficult read. The low-resolution

photocopy and scan as well as the textural quality to the page could be taxing.

Reader and Task: Prior to my placement at Riverside, I would have said many students would not be

familiar with zines. However, our librarian loves them and has a featured zine section of the library and

has coordinated with an English teacher to make zines for her class, so many students have at least heard

of them. I think given the past few years of protest to police violence students will have an awareness of

the rhetoric surrounding the topic and protesting/“rioting” as a response. This should provide a personal

perspective of a historical moment that students can then apply to themselves in the present moment.

This will begin to raise questions about necessary and warranted criminal behavior. 

When do “regular” citizens get pushed to the point of committing crimes? What are the costs and benefits

to these types of crimes? What does it mean to protest those who supposedly uphold law?

Culturally Relevant Text 2: Riley, B (2001). “5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O.” [Recorded by The Coup]

on Party Music. 75 Ark. 

Thanks for reading and looking forward to hearing comments!