The Issues of Public Policy in Education

Contextualizing some current issues impacting the classroom

Education policy is the governing and non-governing bodies’ decision making over rules, mandates, and procedures for the operation of schools. In the United States, policy enactment concerns the accountability of schools to financial uses, resource allocations, and learning standards. The major education policy makers at the federal, state, and local level set the tone for how school boards manage their schools and decisions. This paper focuses on the examination of policy at its various level, how the process informs the implementation, and the classroom implications. Education also exists within the context of social, political, and cultural and those perspectives influence policy.?

Public policy is central to all systems of governance. Particularly in the United States, public policy is the development of rules, regulations and laws that govern certain aspects of society. Fowler (2013) defines policy as a dynamic and value driven process that a political system uses to handle a public problem. Education is at the heart of many policy decisions as it is one of the pillars in American society. Federal, State, and Local governments set the standard for most laws, ordinances, and court decisions. School boards and administrators enact rules and regulations to manage the procedure at their schools.?

It is important for educational leaders to be the ones who help implement and execute policies. This ensures that the teachers are prepared to work in an environment that effectively serves the students. These stakeholders and procedures exist within the backdrop of many social, cultural, and political influences. These “actors” create many of the debates over current issues in education. Policy decisions mostly begin with decisions by the federal, state, and local governments.

Federal, State, and Local?Policy

Federal governments focus primarily on funding for education policy. They are involved in the larger sweeping decisions that set standards for schools to follow to ensure they continue to receive public funding. State governments function like the primary accountability to public and government run schools (The Center for Public Justice, 2020). States can organize their authority differently giving certain power to local governments or individual schools.?

State governments provide many of the standards for subjects taught in the schools, along with a significant portion of funding for the schools within the state. Local government are run through elected bodies in counties or school boards that focus primarily on the day-to-day operations of schools. The division of authority set by the sates creates school districts with local leaders like superintendents and other major administrative figures (The Center for Public Justice, 2020). The major differences between the policy implications of the federal, state, and local governments are scope of influence, legislative and regulatory focus, and connection to the student body.

Federal government tends to focus on larger issues. The effects of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 put legislative accountability on the schools across the country and has caused a flurry of opinions along all sides of the debate. State governments have focused on curriculum standards across the counties in the school. Local districts often work on rules and mandates for bus transportation, hiring of teachers and other staff, and other policy decisions that are seen daily. These difference help define the roles each government plays in the policy process.

Greater transparency in policy decision making characterizes the habits of healthy policy makers (Gill et al., 2016). Those who have the political and economic authority can increase the effectiveness of policy making decisions through more transparency in the process and recognizing the role everyone educator, student, and family has in managing the growth and development of education. This begins with understanding how the steps of the policy process aid in its efficiencies.

Policy Process

The policy process establishes practices that allows citizens in society to make decisions that affect the public. Fowler (2013) defines a chronological process of the procedure that is often utilized. It begins with defining the issue, then setting the agenda, writing the policy, adopting the policy, leading into implementation, and finally evaluation.?

This process varies from state to state and locality, but the bare structure of this process enables school administrators to operate as leaders within their organization and community. In the policy process, administrators can function like policy makers by developing rules and regulation, implementers by creating a plan to carry out a rule, lastly, as followers of policy issues passed by federal, state, and local levels (Fowler 2013). Another consideration in the process is the role educational leaders play in setting the tone and example for policy enactment.

Educational leaders understand how their school districts exist within their community. They possess a perspective on their teachers, students, and families that some policy makers at all levels are not privy to understanding. The strength of policy is the trust in its actors and the ability for it function as part of the school’s procedures. Educational leaders are a bridge for disparate stakeholders within the system. When discussing the role administrators play in the community for their institution, policy decisions are influenced by social, cultural, and political aspects.

Social, Cultural, and Political Aspects

Schools exist within a system of social and cultural influences. Policy exists to provide logic and consistency for enacting certain procedures across all institutions. Welton et al. (2017) focuses on how policy implementation is framed through the role of power, professional order, and collective intentionality. These three terms shape the discussion and many of the social and cultural aspects of policy. From each standpoint, policy actors are involved. School officials establish order through rules within their professional logic (Welton et al., 2017). This gives them the ability to set the parameters for social interactions. This likely improves the school’s ability to address specific challenges.?

Students and teachers possess their own views outside of the school and school officials must uphold institutional commitments while balancing providing need to those students and teachers within the school with varied perspectives. Collective intentionality is shared recognition of one’s social agency in each situation Welton et al. (2017). Meaning people like parent organizations, community groups, or educational groups are collectives who can raise questions about the power of the school’s rules. Policy makers and school boards can be challenged in their role given social and cultural contexts.

Political influences drive the decisions for educational policy. While some of the outcomes have resulted in positive changes for schools, the motive behind the scenes may be different. Policy reforms that have focused on efficiency, accountability, and rationality often reflecting dominant political voices that shape policy solutions (Diem et al., 2019). Educational stakeholders and other policy actors are then forced to work with economic and educational problems that political storylines shape as a crisis (Diem et al., 2019). This larger challenge between political influences and policy reform tends to be less about the overall teaching and learning improvement but part of a political agenda.?

Political problems have never been solved without the engagement of citizens, and this is especially true in education (Shuffelton, 2020). Within this context, is the complex web of social, cultural, and political views that impact how policy is designed. Its implementation is further challenge by many of the current issues in education.

Current Issues

Some examples of policy issues include merit pay for teachers and the debate over national curriculum standards (Fowler, 2013). The discussion over topics like these point to how policy impacts teacher’s salaries which can be tied to motivation and persistence in their role. National curriculum standards focus on power dynamics and spheres of control. Another important discussion is the privatization of education.?

Families are considering alternative options like private schools, religious schools, and charter schools. Public school funding has been an issue and is increased with talks about privatization of education. These larger issues effect many federal and state polices. There are also local challenges like admission policies, uniforms, and reduced lunch programs that are connected to specific communities across the school districts in the United States.

Even within the issues surrounding the policy environment, one under appreciated policy actor are parents. School boards and the institutions should be accountable to the short coming of policy decisions and are the ones accountable to larger legislative involvement and how that impacts their students and communities. Shuffelton (2020) observed through conversation with parents that the rhetoric shifts in risk and responsibility with education have created questions about the school’s system and effectiveness.?

Shuffelton (2020) focused on policy reforms in school districts in Chicago that were emphasizing “parent involvement” as a factor to increase performance, increased citizenship by student’s families, and include them into the accountability chain. Some parents argued accountability measures wasted funds for programs that distracted from the problem of student learning. Others saw the opportunity opened doors for parents to be stronger actors in the school’s decisions. Educational policy is enacted and enforced in certain ways that impact the most important and volatile stake holders in the schools?—?the students.

K-12 Classroom Implications

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has had profound impacts on education in the United States. Its influence is one way to approach discussing how policy impacts K-12 classrooms. As one of the more polarizing legislative decisions, it shows how federal policy when implemented in individual classrooms can fall short in reflecting all schools. NCLB strict requirements for higher teacher quality and dependence on standardized tests were put into place without the funding many schools needed to enact this effectively (Hodges & Lamb, 2019). This led to disparities in classrooms across the country. Schools like, in the in State of Washington found some of the disparities to hurt students of color or other minority student groups (Hodges & Lamb, 2019).

Other classroom implications of policy decisions are the challenges of power, authority, and bias. Educational settings are formed by major actors of power in the institution. Governing bodies can wield economic power authority that changes the resources available to teachers to use (Fowler, 2013). School administrators can control the conditions of the schools and hiring of staff that improves working and learning conditions for the students (Fowler, 2013). The parents and public are powerful voices in organizing and using the media as they form ideas that can create expectations that students have when the enter a classroom.?

The classroom is also affected by policy decisions like curriculum changes, learning standards, and teacher’s evaluations. Bias can change the way students are evaluated and scrutinized. Minority students have shown to struggle in classrooms where they are underrepresented or working in environments that are not aware of social issues surrounding their day-to-day lives (Fowler, 2013). Accountability measures vary across the country and authority figures can utilize their powers in school to change the way students learn and how they formulate ideas.

Policy formation remains the most important fixture for schools as their procedural methods set the standard for what educational services are available to students. NCLB hoped to change the climate of education for the better in the United States, but weak systems of accountability and lack of vision for better resource and financial allocation revealed the difficulties students and teachers would face in their classrooms (Hodges & Lamb, 2019). Accountably in education is another issue for classrooms.

Gill et al. (2016) posits that policy makers and educational leaders consider accountability on a small scope. If accountability is considered more of a relationship between power, resource, and social development that balances between equal policy actors and stakeholders, then it might offer a better solution for schools.?

Four kinds of accountability include rule, outcome, market, and professional based (Gill et al., 2016). Each function differently with specific goals. If context can inform policy making, then better decisions can be made that support the students better in the classroom. It begins with establishing a better relationship of accountability by the school to its governing bodies.

Policy is a critical component to the systems of education across the United States. It primarily functions as measures of accountability, leverage, and protection for the stakeholders in education and policy actors. As the United States moves into the future, policy makers are tasked with working alongside the development of society and culture and recognizing their role in developing better systems for the schools to operate. Educational leaders are tasked with ensuring their institution understands the role policy plays in their daily tasks and how they can better serve in executing the decisions.?

Education is rooted in student learning outcomes and developing young people as they grow to be members of society. Policy decision are involved in the daily learning of students and classrooms across the K-12 education spectrum can impacted both positively and negatively by any singular decision. The community is a reflection of its citizens, from the students to the families, taxpayers, and other major players, everyone’s voice can be an influence in educational policy decisions.

References

Diem, S., Young, M. D., & Sampson, C. (2019). Where Critical Policy Meets the Politics of Education: An Introduction. Educational Policy, 33(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904818807317

Fowler, F. C. (2013). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders. Pearson.

Gill, B. P., Lerner, J. S., & Meosky, P. (2016). Reimagining accountability in K-12 education. Behavioral Science & Policy, 2(1), 57–70. https://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Freimagining-accountability-k-12-education%2Fdocview%2F1869478961%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085

Hodges, J., & Lamb, K. (2019). Washington’s High-Ability Programs During the No Child Left Behind Era. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 42(4), 283–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353219874422

Shuffelton, A. What parents know: risk and responsibility in the United States education policy and parents’ responses. Comparative Education, 56(3), 365–378. https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1080/03050068.2020.1724490

The Center for Public Justice. 2020. How Are The Local, State And Federal Governments Involved In Education? Is This Involvement Just?. Retrieved from, December 17, 2020. https://www.cpjustice.org/public/page/content/cie_faq_levels_of_government

Welton, A. D., Harris, T. O., Altamirano, K., Williams, T. (2017). The politics of student voice: Conceptualizing a model for critical analysis. In Young, M. D., Diem, S. (Eds.), Critical approaches to education policy analysis: Moving beyond tradition (pp. 83–110).