Leadership Assignment – District Instructional Policy
In your reflection:
How did rational and bureaucratic policies ignore humanistic values of “rigor, relevance and developing capacity p. 542” in the article? Comment on instances in your own experience in any organization (education organization preferred) where rational and bureaucratic policies ignored humanistic values in your opinion.
2 ½ pages.
After answering on the first question from the attached article, Please talk about any experience that anybody can have at any organization around the world (schools, companies), it is an important part. The article is the attached.
Thanks,
This week we shall study an article (uploaded below) on policy formation. Note the key items in the article. What are the problems being addressed? Policy formation is often a contested project because of the diverse beliefs of the stakeholders in social organizations including schools districts or schools.
You are reading a study that examines the way policies are informed by personal attitudes and beliefs. There is a contrast between the vice principal and the principal in this article. Additionally, teachers through their union express a different perspective. To have ‘a rational’ policy emptied of the beliefs and a perception of stakeholders is next to impossible. Policies are constructed and formed by people for other people and therefore the identities of those at the table are likely to get in the interpretation of what is best for students.
I remember the first time I taught the course, one student was so frustrated with the contentious political stances involved in the policy formation presented in the article and exclaimed – We need to read about a real policy formation method. What the student failed to appreciate is that policy formation is a political contest. From the federal government to the state and local governments, policies are formed and interpreted through the experiences, beliefs, and attitudes of the stakeholders – there is no policy formation that is empty of the people. Sometimes the losers in school policy formation are the very students who are supposed to benefit from policies formed in their name.
In your own research, you will note some of the ways the personal and complex experiences and contexts get in the way of changing or implementing policies for the benefit of students or some specific group of students.
1. Understand the problem that are being addressed here
2. Articulate the beliefs and attitudes that enter into the process
3. Finally analyze the policy – re-name the problem, analyze the interest groups that are represented at the table and those not represented, analyze how the policy addressed the issues/problems. What do you think was the outcome of the policy? Who gained and who lost? Why?
