importance of school policies essay

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Importance of clear policies and procedures in schools

School policies and procedures establish expectations, keep students safe, and make sure they receive a good education. Here's how to write clear policies.

December 22, 2020

Article highlights

• Policies that set proper expectations.
• Policies that create a safe learning environment.
• Procedures to establish before there’s an issue.

Schools are complex organizations that have many moving parts.

Parents trust schools to keep their children safe and provide a good education. Teachers expect schools to help them do their jobs effectively. School boards and administrators have certain expectations about how a school should run.

In order to function effectively, schools must have clear policies and procedures that guide day-to-day processes. These policies cover everything from attendance, to student discipline, to emergency procedures.

School policies come in several different forms.

For example, most schools have separate handbooks for students, teachers, staff, and even parents. The rules and expectations laid out in these handbooks hold everyone accountable and ensure that the school can run properly.

School policies and procedures should be clear and specific.

The target audience – whether students, parents, or staff – need to be able to understand the rules in order to follow them. And administrators should regularly review policy handbooks to make sure all policies are up to date.

Overall, school policies and procedures establish expectations, keep students and staff safe, and make sure students receive a good education.

Set proper expectations

Clear communication about expectations is especially important in schools.

While teaching styles and classroom rules may differ between teachers, the basic guidelines should be consistent. This helps unify the school and make sure parents and students know what to expect.

It also helps create an effective environment for learning, where students and staff can focus on lessons, rather than getting caught up in arguments over things like attendance or clothing.

School policies and procedures codify these expectations, so everyone is on the same page.

Attendance policy

In the U.S., school attendance is a matter of law.   Most states   require children to begin school at age 6, and attend school for 180 days each year until they reach the age of 16, 17, or 18.

While parents are ultimately responsible for getting their children to school,   state and federal laws   require schools to keep attendance records.

Therefore, school policies and procedures on attendance have to make expectations abundantly clear to parents, students, and staff.

The state or local school board establishes many of the specific attendance guidelines. But handbooks for parents and students should include clear, jargon-free language on the benefits of full attendance – the “why” behind the policy.

School dress codes can be tricky.

In recent years, there have been   several   protests   over school dress codes that are seen as sexist or unfair.

Schools can avoid such controversy by creating clear dress code policies that apply to the entire student population.

They must not target one particular group of students, or be enforced in a way that could be seen as discriminatory against students of a particular race, religion, political belief, or gender identity.

School policies and procedures about the dress code should be specific and objective.

For example, if the dress code prohibits “gang-related” apparel, it should specify what that means. If the policy uses words such as “revealing,” “inappropriate,” or “disruptive,” it should define them or give examples.

Creating and distributing dress code policies will ensure that students understand expectations. They will know administrators aren't singling them out.

Clear policies will also save teachers from having to subjectively decide whether a student’s clothing counts as “revealing,” which   can be awkward .

Cell phones and electronic devices

Parents often want their students to have a cell phone so that they can get in touch in case of an emergency. And smartphones have become so ubiquitous that most schools have given up trying to ban them altogether.

Many schools allow students to carry cell phones as long as they keep them turned off or on silent. Some ban students from using cell phones at any point during school hours, while others allow them to use cell phones between classes and during lunchtime.

Allowing students to carry smartphones can be problematic, though.

A   2012 study   found that roughly 94% of high schoolers accessed social media on their phones during class.

And   other studies   have shown that schools that ban cell phones have better educational outcomes. Things such as cheating, cyberbullying, and taking pictures or videos can also be issues.

Teachers need support from school administration when dealing with cell phones in the classroom. As one administrator wrote in an   article on Edutopia :

“Cell phones in the classroom can be a significant discipline problem and classroom management struggle if clear and explicit guidelines are not established the first day.”

Clear school policies and procedures make practices more consistent.

Students don’t have to wonder what devices they are allowed to use and when. And teachers know how to enforce the rules.

Create a safe learning environment

Of course, school policies and procedures are not only about fairness and expectations. They also establish guidelines to keep students and staff safe.

Creating a safe learning environment involves protecting students and staff from physical, emotional, and psychological harm. Students need to feel safe and secure at school in order to learn effectively.

School policies and procedures establish guidelines for safety in several areas:

Bullying and sexual harassment

Bullying can take many different forms, including physical threats, verbal or emotional bullying, or cyberbullying.

Sexual harassment can also take different forms: unwanted physical contact, inappropriate comments or jokes, demand for sexual favors.

Victims of bullying or harassment can be hesitant to speak up. They may worry that their claims won’t be taken seriously or that the bully or harasser will retaliate.

Good school policies and procedures make it easier for parents, teachers, and students to identify bullying or sexual harassment. They provide a way forward for victims and hold perpetrators accountable.

The policies should provide definitions and examples of things that would qualify as bullying or harassment.

Policies should lay out the steps for reporting bullying or harassment and specify that all allegations will be taken seriously.

The policies should also define the procedures for investigating the claims, and the actions the school will take if the claims are found to be true.

Establishing clear, specific policies and procedures about bullying and harassment will not prevent all incidents, but they give a framework for all involved – taking the individual opinions or best guesses out of the equation.

Student code of conduct

A code of conduct covers day-to-day student behavior.

The exact details of the code of conduct will differ depending on the needs of the specific school. But it should be as simple as possible, establishing guidelines for appropriate and inappropriate behavior.

With the code of conduct especially, it’s important for the student handbook to use language that students will understand.

For example, a code of conduct for a middle school should use vocabulary and language that a 6th-8th grader will be able to easily read and understand.

A good code of conduct helps students succeed by establishing expectations and boundaries. It brings clarity and consistency in practices across the school and helps teachers and administrators know how to address behavioral issues.

Like all school policies and procedures, the code of conduct should change and grow with the school community.

The school should gather a team of administrators, teachers, and students to review and update the code of conduct every year.

Fighting/weapons

School policies and procedures should provide definitions and examples of dangerous objects that are banned from campus.

The policies should explain any state or local laws that govern weapons or violence in schools. It should also establish the consequences of bringing dangerous objects to school.

Having clear policies in place can prevent students from accidentally bringing dangerous objects to school.

If a violent incident does occur, good school policies and procedures ensure that everyone knows what to do to stay safe.

Alcohol, drugs, and tobacco

Many U.S. schools have adopted “zero tolerance” policies when it comes to drugs and alcohol. But   a recent study showed   that such policies may not be effective deterrents.

Instead,   United Educators   suggests:

“The most effective policies pertaining to the use, possession, and distribution of these substances are both comprehensive and compassionate. They emphasize prevention and nondisciplinary intervention, as well as fair and consistent discipline, to hold students accountable for their behavior.”

The   United Educators report   includes several helpful areas for schools to think through when creating school drug and alcohol policies.

Establish procedures before there’s an issue

Schools have many moving pieces that can make day-to-day operations complicated. School administrators shouldn’t wait until something goes wrong to address an issue.

Instead, they should proactively create school policies and procedures so teachers, administrators, and parents will know what to do if an issue arises.

This helps ensure that the school runs smoothly and treats all students consistently.

Dismissal procedure

Most days, school dismissal and pickup will be fairly simple. However, schools should never find that they released a child to an unauthorized person or in a way in which the parent did not know where they are.

So every school should have policies in place.

Policies should cover authorized adults, early dismissal, inclement weather, changes in dismissal type, and how the school will handle dismissal in the event of an emergency.

This will prevent things from descending into chaos if there is an incident. It may be seen as a hassle to some, but will ultimately give parents peace of mind.

Academic dishonesty

School policies and procedures should lay out instructions for how to handle students caught cheating.

This takes the decision-making away from individual teachers so that they don’t have to determine if or how to discipline the student. It is consistent for everyone.

It also makes students aware from day one what will happen if they choose to cheat – no talking their way out of the consequences.

Student clubs and athletics

Having clear guidelines in place for school clubs and athletics will prevent accusations of discrimination.

For example, school policies may specify that a student-athlete must maintain a certain GPA.

They may also lay out requirements for adults or non-students who want to lead or participate in after-school clubs. What access will they have to school facilities? What paperwork or charters are required? And what topics or goals are acceptable.

These standards would apply to all students, regardless of athletic ability, social status, or any other factor.

Student search and seizure

Courts have ruled that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments don’t always apply the same to students as they do to adults.

While police officers must prove “probable cause” before searching private property, teachers and school administrators just have to have “reasonable suspicion” that a student has violated a law or school policy.

However, there are limits to how far a school can go with searches and seizures.

The Center for Public Education   provides helpful information on students’ rights. Clear school policies and procedures will reduce liability and help keep schools out of court.

Disciplinary guidelines

As mentioned before, teachers will have different approaches to how they run their classroom. But individual teachers should not be the ones deciding disciplinary steps.

School policies and procedures should lay out consistent, escalating steps for discipline. They should be age appropriate, fair, and explained in a way students can understand as they move up from grade to grade.

The policies should include who is authorized to invoke each form of discipline.

For example, a teacher might be authorized to assign detention, a principal or administrator may have to sign off on a suspension, and the school board may have to approve an expulsion.

Clear, well-written school policies and procedures help create environments where students can learn effectively.

Policies help schools keep students safe, enforce rules consistently, and provide the best possible education.

Discover other policies that are essential for your school to have in writing .

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5 Tips for Writing Meaningful Policy and Procedures for Schools

• School Administration
• An Introduction to Teaching
• Tips & Strategies
• Policies & Discipline
• Community Involvement
• Technology in the Classroom
• Teaching Adult Learners
• Issues In Education
• Teaching Resources
• Becoming A Teacher
• Assessments & Tests
• Elementary Education
• Secondary Education
• Special Education
• Homeschooling
• M.Ed., Educational Administration, Northeastern State University
• B.Ed., Elementary Education, Oklahoma State University

Writing policy and procedures for schools is a part of an administrator's job. School policies and procedures are essentially the governing documents by which your school district and school buildings are operated. It is essential that your policies and procedures be current and up-to-date. These should be reviewed and revised as necessary, and new policies and procedures should be written as needed.

The following guidelines are tips and suggestions to consider when you are evaluating old policy and procedures or writing new ones.

Why Is the Evaluation of School Policies and Procedures Important? 

Every school has a student handbook , support staff handbook, and certified staff handbook which are loaded with policies and procedures. These are vital pieces of each school because they govern the day-to-day occurrences that happen in your buildings. They are valuable because they offer the guidelines for how the administration and school board believe their school should be run. These policies come into play every single day. They are a set of expectations that all constituents within the school are held accountable by.

How Do You Write Targeted Policy?

Policies and procedures typically are written with a specific target audience in mind, This includes students, teachers, administrators, support staff, and even parents. Policies and procedures should be written so that the target audience understands what is being asked or directed of them. For example, a policy written for a middle school student handbook should be written at a middle school grade level and with terminology that the average middle school student will understand.

What Makes a Policy Clear?

A quality policy is both informative and direct meaning that the information is not ambiguous, and it is always straight to the point. It is also clear and concise. A well-written policy will not create confusion. A good policy is also up-to-date. For example, policies dealing with technology probably need frequently updated due to the rapid evolution of the technology industry itself. A clear policy is easy to understand. The readers of the policy should not only understand the meaning of the policy but understand the tone and the underlying reason the policy was written.

When Do You Add New Policies or Revise Old Ones?

Policies should be written and/or revised as needed. Student handbooks and such should be reviewed on a yearly basis. Administrators should be encouraged to keep documentation of all policies and procedures that they feel need to be added or revised as the school year moves along. There are times to put a piece of new or revised policy in effect immediately within a school year, but the majority of the time, the new or revised policy should go into effect the following school year.

What Are Good Procedures for Adding or Revising Policies?

The majority of policy should go through several channels before it is included within your proper district’s policy book. The first thing that has to happen is that a rough draft of the policy has to be written. This is usually done by a principal or other school administrator . Once the administrator is happy with the policy, then it is an excellent idea to form a review committee made up of the administrator, teachers, students, and parents.

During the review committee, the administrator explains the policy and its purpose, the committee discusses the policy, makes any recommendations for revision, and decides whether it should be submitted to the superintendent for review. The superintendent then reviews the policy and may seek legal counsel to make sure the policy is legally viable. The superintendent may kick the policy back down to the review committee to make changes, may kick out the policy completely, or may send it on to the school board for them to review. The school board can vote to reject the policy, accept the policy, or may ask that a part be revised within the policy before they accept it. Once it is approved by the school board , then it becomes official school policy and is added to the appropriate district handbook.

• The Role of the Principal in Schools
• End of the School Year Checklist for Principals
• 10 Essential Policies for Your Student Handbook
• Examining The Role of an Effective School Superintendent
• 12 New Teacher Start-of-School Strategies
• Schools Have Lots of Options When Selecting a Cell Phone Policy
• A Comprehensive Breakdown of the Roles of School Personnel
• Guidelines for Establishing Effective School Discipline for Principals
• 11 Pros and Cons of Using Movies in Class
• Tips to Help a New School Principal Survive the First Year
• Characteristics of a Highly Effective School Principal
• Appropriate Consequences for Student Misbehavior
• Fostering Cultural Diversity in Your School
• 25 Things Every Teacher Wants From Their Stakeholders
• Tips for Teachers to Make Classroom Discipline Decisions
• Tips to Successfully Pass a School Bond Issue

What education policy experts are watching for in 2022

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, daphna bassok , daphna bassok nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy @daphnabassok stephanie riegg cellini , stephanie riegg cellini nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy michael hansen , michael hansen senior fellow - brown center on education policy , the herman and george r. brown chair - governance studies @drmikehansen douglas n. harris , douglas n. harris nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy , professor and chair, department of economics - tulane university @douglasharris99 jon valant , and jon valant director - brown center on education policy , senior fellow - governance studies @jonvalant kenneth k. wong kenneth k. wong nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy.

January 7, 2022

Entering 2022, the world of education policy and practice is at a turning point. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt the day-to-day learning for children across the nation, bringing anxiety and uncertainty to yet another year. Contentious school-board meetings attract headlines as controversy swirls around critical race theory and transgender students’ rights. The looming midterm elections threaten to upend the balance of power in Washington, with serious implications for the federal education landscape. All of these issues—and many more—will have a tremendous impact on students, teachers, families, and American society as a whole; whether that impact is positive or negative remains to be seen.

Below, experts from the Brown Center on Education Policy identify the education stories that they’ll be following in 2022, providing analysis on how these issues could shape the learning landscape for the next 12 months—and possibly well into the future.

I will also be watching the Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking sessions and following any subsequent regulatory changes to federal student-aid programs. I expect to see changes to income-driven repayment plans and will be monitoring debates over regulations governing institutional and programmatic eligibility for federal student-loan programs. Notably, the Department of Education will be re-evaluating Gainful Employment regulations—put in place by the Obama administration and rescinded by the Trump administration—which tied eligibility for federal funding to graduates’ earnings and debt.

But the biggest and most concerning hole has been in the  substitute teacher force —and the ripple effects on school communities have been broad and deep. Based on personal communications with Nicola Soares, president of  Kelly Education , the largest education staffing provider in the country, the pandemic is exacerbating several problematic trends that have been quietly simmering for years. These are: (1) a growing reliance on long-term substitutes to fill permanent teacher positions; (2) a shrinking supply of qualified individuals willing to fill short-term substitute vacancies; and, (3) steadily declining fill rates for schools’ substitute requests. Many schools in high-need settings have long faced challenges with adequate, reliable substitutes, and the pandemic has turned these localized trouble spots into a widespread catastrophe. Though federal pandemic-relief funds could be used to meet the short-term weakness in the substitute labor market (and mainline teacher compensation, too ), this is an area where we sorely need more research and policy solutions for a permanent fix.

First, what’s to come of the vaccine for ages 0-4? This is now the main impediment to resuming in-person activity. This is the only large group that currently cannot be vaccinated. Also, outbreaks are triggering day-care closures, which has a significant impact on parents (especially mothers), including teachers and other school staff.

Second, will schools (and day cares) require the vaccine for the fall of 2022? Kudos to my hometown of New Orleans, which still appears to be the nation’s only district to require vaccination. Schools normally require a wide variety of other vaccines, and the COVID-19 vaccines are very effective. However, this issue is unfortunately going to trigger a new round of intense political conflict and opposition that will likely delay the end of the pandemic.

Third, will we start to see signs of permanent changes in schooling a result of COVID-19? In a previous post on this blog, I proposed some possibilities. There are some real opportunities before us, but whether we can take advantage of them depends on the first two questions. We can’t know about these long-term effects on schooling until we address the COVID-19 crisis so that people get beyond survival mode and start planning and looking ahead again. I’m hopeful, though not especially optimistic, that we’ll start to see this during 2022.

The CTC and universal pre-K top my list for 2022, but it’s a long list. I’ll also be watching the Supreme Court’s ruling on vouchers in Carson v. Makin , how issues like critical race theory and detracking play into the 2022 elections, and whether we start to see more signs of school/district innovation in response to COVID-19 and the recovery funds that followed.

Electoral dynamics will affect several important issues: the selection of state superintendents; the use of American Rescue Plan funds; the management of safe return to in-person learning for students; the integration of racial justice and diversity into curriculum; the growth of charter schools; and, above all, the extent to which education issues are leveraged to polarize rather than heal the growing divisions among the American public.

Early Childhood Education Education Policy Higher Education

Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy

Phillip Levine

April 12, 2024

Hannah C. Kistler, Shaun M. Dougherty

April 9, 2024

Katharine Meyer, Rachel M. Perera, Michael Hansen

Education policies and strategies

Education is a complex system with many interconnected subsystems and stakeholders. Any decision taken on one component at one level of education brings change to other components and subsystems. This interconnectedness requires policy and decision-makers to ensure that coherent and consistent education policy and strategic frameworks are in place from a sector and system perspective. Emerging challenges such as rapid digitalization, increasing inequality and disruptions caused by climate change, pandemics and conflicts, demand that countries develop resilient and sustainable policies and strategies on which to build efficient, relevant and transformative education systems.

What you need to know about education policies and strategies

Education is one of the largest public sectors often taking up 15-20% of a government's total budget and employing many teachers as civil servants. All education sub-sectors (from early childhood to higher education and beyond) as well as different elements of education (e.g. teachers, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment) must work in sync to support a learner’s lifelong and life-wide learning, as well as their successful social and economic integration. Therefore, education ministries need to define coherently and systemically what the system should achieve, the policy priorities and strategies to deploy to implement that vision and development options and actions that are executable, measurable and accountable. In countries with several ministries in charge of the education and training sector, developing sector-wide education policies and programmes can help overcome incoherence and the development of different plans in isolation that can often contradict one another.

Supporting countries to build and improve their education systems to meet the needs of a changing world is at the core of UNESCO’s work. At the global level, UNESCO develops and advocates for public goods to enable strategic policy-making. These include SimuED, an education sector simulation model that can help countries to develop forward-looking yet feasible education policies and strategies.

UNESCO helps governments to strengthen legal and policy frameworks in relation to education systems as well as improving management efficiency and accountability, financing, data collection and analysis and learning assessment, all with the targets of the 2030 Agenda in view. This is part of UNESCO's rights-based approach to education with States having the main responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil the right to quality education for all throughout life and is carried out through education policy reviews and other technical and capacity development support.

UNESCO also emphasizes the importance of happiness in education as the foundation for better learning. Its  Happy Schools Project  aims to improve learning experiences by focusing on well-being, engagement, a sense of belonging at school, and helps foster a lifelong love of learning. The project targets the happiness of the  school  rather than individual students because schools are sites of holistic, sustainable community development that include teachers, parents, staff and school leaders. Faced with many crises and challenges, schools around the world are struggling to determine how to support teachers, learners, and communities while also prioritizing supplemental learning.  The project emphasizes that schools can be powerful places to combat the negativity that stunts learning, both cognitive and non-cognitive.

Upon request from countries, UNESCO undertakes activities according to the country’s needs which may start with an education policy review or supporting the development of education sector policies and plans. It also promotes policy dialogue and debate based on evidence and insights drawn from analytical work and research. Working mainly through its institutes such as its  International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) , UNESCO helps to build national capacities on developing and implementing education policies to realize the country’s education and national development visions. 

Strengthening the resilience, quality and equity of education systems

A framework to support governments to position school happiness as a key target

through UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning

was allocated to education and training during the pandemic

spend below international benchmarks for public education spending

achieved international target of allocating 0.7% of GNI to official development assistance

highlighted the need to support psycho-social and mental well-being of students and teachers

Education policy working papers

This series documents experiences of countries in the area of education policy development and system strengthening.

Planipolis, by UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning

Planipolis is a portal of national education plans and policies,  key education frameworks and monitoring report. It provides a single entry to official education resources for national policy makers, donors and partners. 

Have you met Malia? She explains why educational planning is the backbone of stronger, more resilient, and quality-focused education systems. Educational planning is also a key to her attaining all of her dreams and aspirations.

Publications

Monitoring SDG 4: education finance

Resources from UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report.

Understanding Educational Policies Essay

Human engagements have been characterized by rules and guidelines for a long period of time now. The processes involved in the setting out of these regulations take different forms and may vary from one country to another depending on how people are expected to interact and address the various challenges that may arise.

The guidelines are usually referred to as public policies since they are expected to provide general direction to the members of the public and to ensure social order (May, 2001). The process of formulating, formalization and implementation has proved to be a daunting task since each sector in the society has its own unique policies (Cockrel, 2004). Different stakeholders in the society that may be affected by the policies must be engaged in one way or another in the public policy formulation process.

The essay seeks to discuss and rate the influence of the legislative bodies, leadership, the justice system, as well as the bureaucracy on the formulation and implementation of educational policies. It will briefly discuss the general pattern in the public policy-making process. The influence of other entities, for instance interest groups, political parties, and the media will also be considered.

Public policy-making process is a product of interactions as well as dynamics among different actors, interest groups, public and private institutions and other technical processes preceding the enactment and interpretation of any public policy. Numerous definitions of policy and policy-making process have been used depending on the context.

For the purposes of this essay, a policy shall be defined as either an explicit or implicit decision or decisions made by a group that lays out the instructions for guiding the subsequent decisions, regulate actions, or monitoring prior decisions reached (Ben-Peretz, 2008). The process of making policies, therefore, varies in complexity as well as scope and the dynamics involved must be acknowledged. A number of models have been designed to provide a general format followed in the process of formulating a given public policy.

The stages involved are well sequenced from the primary level to the ultimate enactment, implementation and interpretation of the policies (Schmidt, Shelly & Crain, 2009). There are five major components in any of these models and they include; problem advocacy, the opponents, the concerned authorities, the implementation, and interpretation/evaluation of the given public policy (Cockrel, 2004).

The first step is the problem identification phase which involves the definition of the issue at hand that the policy will seek to address. This can be done by the concerned/line authorities, institutions, or activists. The advocates of a specified issue will raise people’s awareness and hence recruiting more of them into their course. The target number of people depends on the scope of the problem and the anticipated policy.

The next step involves the proposal of available alternatives for addressing the problems or conditions at hand. These proposals will provide a frame of action in alleviating the identified crisis. The third phase is the identification of appropriate authorities that will engineer the process of policy formulation. The concerned authorities will appoint/design a committee to investigate the problem and establish the magnitude.

It will also be expected to offer a refined list of recommendations for addressing the crisis. The authorities play a central role in determining the progress of the process because they can choose to take the proposals or decline to act. In order to keep the process moving, the advocates continue with the popularization process to gain a wider support from the members of the public. The public mood has been found to be a great determinant of the success in any major public reforms (Denhardt, 2008).

The process of advocacy usually encounters opposition of almost equal magnitude and hence defining another force. The model acknowledges the role of opposition since it plays a significant role in the entire process of policy formation and implementation (Cockrel, 2004). The opposition camp may emerge at any particular stage and the sequence parallels that of the policy advocates.

In most cases, the stages are similar since the opponents may emerge right at the first phase of problem identification, then proposals to counter those of the advocates are made and served to the appropriate authorities. After submitting their alternatives, the opponents will seek to expand their support base to rally against the advocates for policy formation.

The fifth phase is composed of three sections; decision by the authority, implementation, and evaluation. The concerned government authority and the policy makers engage in extensive deliberations with an aim of weighing the situation at hand (Cockrel, 2004). It is at this sub-stage that conflicts/oppositions and dilemmas emerge resulting in shifts in balance between major stakeholders like powerful people and activist groups in the society.

According to Ben-Peretz, these encounters may lead to either the implementation or decline of the proposed policy (2008). With successful negotiations and compromise among the concerned parties, the line authority issues a final decision on the policy. It is important to note that the sequences listed above provide just a general trend but it does not outline a strict step by step format to be followed (Denhardt, 2008).

Once the new policy is enacted it becomes publicly binding and the next stage is its implementation. It will be the responsibility of the authorities to monitor the implementation of the policy. There are two methods through which the policy can be implemented. The first is the revolutionary method where there is immediate transformation of an organization or institution following a top-down format (Ben-Peretz, 2008).

This approach is common in cases where the problem is identified by the authorities themselves. The other method is the evolutionary mode which normally results in a slow bottom-up transformation of the institution’s working pattern. The effectiveness of any policy is in its interpretations. Since all policies are developed to address specific problems, they ought to be evaluated for efficiency and relevance. This is done in the last stage of evaluating the implemented policy.

The evaluation process is usually done by the stakeholders; the advocates, opponents, or other interest groups. Formal methods of evaluation which include the collection of data and their analysis are usually employed. Alternatively, informal approaches like the subjective evaluation of citizens’ opinions about the new policy may be used (Schmidt et al., 2009). The findings from the evaluation stage will be used in gauging the general performance of the policy and the necessary changes effected accordingly.

As evidenced by the preceding discussion, the process of formulating and implementing any public policy involves several parties who may either be in agreement or holding different opinions about a given policy. In the formulation and implementation of an educational policy, a number of parties are usually at the center of the deliberations (Ben-Peretz, 2008).

Some of the stakeholders may include; the legislative bodies, the leadership, the justice system, and the bureaucracy (Dye, 2002). Other influential parties are the interest/activist groups, political parties, and the media.

It is clear that education takes many different forms for varying intentions and in many institutions. There is the early childhood education, first to twelfth grade studies, between two to four year college or university education, postgraduate and professional studies, pedagogical education as well as training for a specific job. This implies that education policies affect people across all ages and sectors related to education (Cockrel, 2004).

In the process of formulating educational policies for schools, issues such as the size of the school, student-teacher ratio, school control-either private or public, teacher training and certification, teaching approaches, nature of curricular and the content, qualifications for graduation, investment in infrastructural development, and the ethical values that schools are expected to observe(Dye, 2002).

The different parties have quite a significant difference when it comes to influencing the policy formulation and implementation process. The power of the legislative bodies like the members of government such as presidents or the Ministers of Education really play a central role in determining the fate of proposed educational policies (Ben-Peretz, 2008).

They are expected to ensure the formulation and enactment of good policies that will ensure both economic and social progress among the people. The legislature may be regarded as one of the most influential in the formulation of educational policies as well as their implementation and evaluation (Silver, 1990).

The legislative bodies are responsible for the enactment of rules and regulations that monitor educational practices at virtually all levels of government authorities. The legislature provides educational guidelines that are implemented in a top-down sequence since the policies are formulated by highly trained and skilled people. Normally, the legislative branches include the city councils, state legislature, or the Congress. In some situations, the legislative may be an executive agency or a court.

Understanding how the legislative bodies work in the formulation and implementation of educational policies is very important. The members are responsible for the identification of a given problem or condition that need to be addressed. A committee of experts is constituted and charged with the responsibility of investigating the problem and to make appropriate recommendations (Denhardt, 2008). The investigators collect different people’s opinions and analyze them before arriving at the recommendations.

Within a specified period of time, the committee avails its findings to the legislative bodies for consideration. It is at this stage that the legislature may opt to adopt the recommendations or decline to act on them. The final decision is then declared to the public for implementation. The new policies have clear steps for their implementation. The process of effecting the changes may be either long term (evolutionary mode) or within a short period of time which is also referred to as the revolutionary mode of implementation (Ben-Peretz, 2008).

In most cases, policies released to the public as legislative decrees or by executive orders are normally expected to be implemented with minimal resistance. Another influence of the legislature is in the fact that they are also the ones who receive the proposals from the advocates for change in the educational sector. However, given the numerous number of stakeholders in the education sector, some educational policies may be rejected and hence hampering with the implementation stage.

Moreover, legislative bodies are in direct control of government’s educational resources and may influence their distribution. Availing the resources may hasten the policy implementation process (Wilson, 2008). The legislative bodies at different levels of the society exert proportionate power on the formulation and implementation of educational policies.

The role of state legislature, for instance, is to review the policies in educational institutions and agencies and may issue orders for policy improvement. Any issues and problems arising from the educational sector are part of the agenda for the legislative bodies (Ben-Peretz, 2008). It is also evident that the legislatures respond to natural disasters, research findings, and other crises in education and trigger the formulation of appropriate policies.

The other source of influence of the legislative bodies is the fact that they are acknowledged as public decision-making organs (Wilson, 2008). They are therefore responsible for making the final decisions or policy choice with reference to the alternatives proposed by other stakeholders in the educational sector. They have to harmonize the often competing interests and opinions from the different actors in education.

Once they have formulated a given educational policy, the legislative bodies forward the new policy to the executive agencies which will facilitate their implementation (Wilson, 2008). When the legislators are forced to determine policies by voting, they would always be guided by the wishes of their constituents. The legislature holds a central role since they can assign duties, even to the executive by legislation.

Although the legislative bodies have been demonstrated to wield a lot of power in the policy formulation process, they do not have direct influence when it comes to the implementation of the new policies/laws (Schmidt et al., 2009). Other government agencies will be monitoring the implementation of the prescribed educational policies. The legislative bodies are therefore very effective in influencing educational policy formation, particularly during the formulation stage.

The second party that has influence on educational policy formulation and implementation process is the society’s leadership. The work of a leader is to have a vision of the future together with its associated challenges and to define and lead the way towards a brighter course.

In this respect, leaders of organizations, educational institutions, and political parties, among others must be in a position to identify issues and problems in the societal sectors (Wilson, 2008). They also propose alternative ways of addressing the problems and forwarding them to the legislative bodies for consideration.

The president as the leader of the states or a country has inherent discretionary powers to influence the policy formulation and implementation process. Most national leaders in the world have been known to influence the policies affecting education, and mostly through executive orders. They champion the legislation of appropriate policies that will bring meaningful transformation to the education sector (Silver, 1990).

Furthermore, governors, city managers, and mayors in most states and cities have overwhelming discretionary policy-making power. These leadership positions are elective and hence carry with it some public good will necessary to identify issues and problems as well as recommend solutions on their behalf (Wilson, 2008). This implies that the leaders will strive to ensure the enactment of universal access to basic education policy, subsidized higher education, guidelines for proper teacher training, as well as policies for adult education.

Leaders seeking elective positions usually have well written manifestos of how they will address societal problems, educational challenges included (Silver, 1990). Once they are elected, they are faced with the challenge of fulfilling the promises and hence they formulate policies for legislation purposes.

During the advocacy for a given transformation in the education sector, there is usually a leader who motivates people to agitate for the formation and implementation of policies. In order to give the necessary support to express the seriousness of their call, the leader recruits more people from the society so as to overcome any opposition forces that may emerge (Ben-Peretz, 2008).

Moreover, the leaders are usually in charge of committees and other decision-making groups and they will determine the general course of action in the policy formulation and implementation process. Depending on the nature of the new educational policy, leadership greatly influences the implementation process since they command respect from the people (Dye, 2002). In situations where unpopular policies are enacted, the same leaders will curtail the implementation process.

Hence leadership plays a central role when it comes to the general process of educational policy formation and implementation (Cockrel, 2004). It is therefore apparent to note that leadership has such a significant degree of influence on the process of formulating and implementing educational policies.

Further analysis of the forces that shape and influence the formulation and implementation of educational policies reveals that the justice system has great impact on the process. The role of the courts is usually to solve conflicts that may arise among different members of the society.

It is not easy to acknowledge the contribution of the courts towards policy formulation and implementation in most sectors (Dye, 2002). During the initial phase of advocacy, opposition may emerge and depending on the extent of impact of the anticipated policy, those opposed may opt to move to court to halt the advocacy.

With the judge as the decision-maker, he or she may give new directions that would shape the course of the agitation process hence contributing indirectly to the policy formulation process. This is reinforced by the fact that there will always be competing formulations of policies forcing the participants to want to seek the intervention of the courts (Wilson, 2008). The decisions made by the judiciary have been found to have far reaching consequences on the educational policy formulation and implementation.

The most significant influences of the courts are mainly felt when it comes to the implementation of a given educational policy. This is because there are more conflicts at the implementation phase compared to the formulation stage (Denhardt, 2008).

Some of the well-known examples include the civil rights cases which are sponsored by the court, particular in cases related to racial discrimination and abuse of labor force. In such a situation, the accused and the complainant act as the participants in the policy formulation and implementation while the judge is the final decision-maker (Wilson, 2008).

In most instances, the court may rule against one proposal and approve a new set of policies hence participating in the implementation process. The courts have the authority to analyze any educational policy that has any unconstitutional clauses. They can also promulgate new sets of policies with adherence to the principles outlined in the constitution. This demonstrates the influence of the judicial system in the formulation of public policies, particularly educational policies.

Instances that lead people to the court include conflicts involving two institutions, individuals against organizations, individuals against associations/groups, and among individuals. The complainant will be seeking assistance from the court on the proper interpretation of the educational policy at hand (May, 2001). This implies that the role of the courts in the formulation and implementation process cannot be ignored.

The fourth significant influential party in the formulation and implementation of educational policies is the governmental bureaucracies. They comprise of the civil/government employees who work in the different levels of the society and help in the formulation and implementation of government policies (Silver, 1990). Most of them occupy leadership positions and are able to influence the process of policy development.

Since they handle issues that may arise from the educational sector, they can easily identify problems in education that need to be addressed by the development of a policy (Dye, 2002). They are also well placed to receive backing from the people because they are recognized as part of the authority.

The bureaucracies are such a strong force in policy formulation and implementation because they consist of experts. They assist the government in making informed policies by designing appropriate policy proposals (Wilson, 2008). The formulation phase, therefore, will be quite easier since it may take a bottom-up trend and hence increasing the chances of a strong support and subsequent implementation of the policy.

In some states, the senior most government workers can issue orders that take the form of policies and ensure that they are observed. The state/federal government may also take recommendations from the members of the bureaucracy and use them to create new education policies (Wilson, 2008). Some transformations in the education sector like the need to review the system requires the advice of experts who can evaluate the significance of the policies before they are implemented.

The most significant role of the bureaucracies comes in handy when it comes to the implementation phase of the educational policy. When top government authorities pass new policies, they expect that they will be effectively implemented by their subordinates (Ben-Peretz, 2008). The task of implementation, however, may prove to be really challenging especially when it extends down to the lowest level of the society. Since most policies are developed by top government officials, they become easier to implement since they are usually passed on in a top-down approach.

The bureaucracies facilitate representation of the government at all levels of the society. They monitor the enforcement of the new policies depending on the preferred mode of implementation. Within the educational sector, the implementation of policies is greatly influenced by other agencies in the society apart from the main implementing agency (Ben-Peretz, 2008). The bureaucracy therefore will have to coordinate this sensitive stage. In most cases, they do not force the people to obey the policies, instead, they put into consideration personal concerns, difficulties, the members of the society, as well as other interests (Denhardt, 2008).

Most government bureaucracies, therefore, hold crucial information in the formulation and implementation of educational policies. The authority bestowed upon them helps in overcoming the influence of political forces especially those who may object the new policies (Wilson, 2008). In some states, most of the government agents are elected giving them an upper hand over the implementation of new government policies on education.

The bureaucracies control and regulate other policy makers in their territories like members of school boards as well as of city councils and local governments (Silver, 1990). They are responsible for the analysis of problems, formulation of policies, and monitoring their implementation and evaluation. These depict the degree of influence that the bureaucracies have over the formulation and implementation of educational policies.

The above four major parties at the center of the formulation and implementation of educational policies seem to wield uniquely significant influence on the process. Since each of them have the discretion to agree with the others or to hold differing opinions, there is need to always reach a consensus when it comes to issues affecting a wider section of the society (Dye, 2002). Most of the actors may remain adamant when it comes to sticking to their perspectives but the process of formulating policies will exhibit success especially when the policy provides for new ways of improving the education sector.

Challenges of implementation may however be difficult to avoid but the opposition may also end up improving the quality of the policy through reviews (Cockrel, 2004). In this context, therefore, it is not easy to rate chronologically the influence of the different entities on the formulation and implementation of the various educational policies. Their varying degrees of influence are situational and may compliment each other in ensuring the successful formulation and implementation of policies.

There are a number of other significant stakeholders in the education sector who play important roles in determining the success of the educational policies. Interest groups such as teachers unions and parents’ associations may be complimentary when it comes to both the formulation and implementation of a given education policy (Schmidt et al., 2009).

These groups may greatly help the primary implementing agency in achieving its goals as well as the objectives of the policy. Some of the nongovernmental agencies may be affected by the new policies. Their conventional ways of operations may need to be changed as a result of the new policies. With these requirements, the interest groups may support the implementation or totally resist the policies especially if their opinions were not sought during the policy formulation stage.

Moreover, the government provisions affecting such a sensitive field in the society as the school system will always receive extensive scrutiny from the members of the public. Any failure to take this consideration may result in difficulty when it comes to the implementation process.

Significant resistance from these quarters will force the review of the policies before they are eventually re-implemented. This implies that organized groups of people can exert pressure on the implementing agency to make the necessary alterations to the policies (May, 2001).

The other important actors in the formulation and implementation of public policies are the political parties. Political parties are always at cross-roads when it comes to advocacy for the different policies. As they seek election into government, different parties present their manifesto/agenda for the people. They accomplish this task by highlighting all the reforms that they intend to bring in the various sectors of the society (Schmidt et al., 2009).

They may also resort to criticizing the existing educational policies. The number of registered political parties is usually large. For instance, two major ones (Republican and Democratic) in the US normally exchange the national leadership roles. This periodic alternation of leadership has influenced the formulation and implementation of educational policies in most states.

The public media also plays a central role in the formulation and implementation of most public policies. The media can help in popularizing a given policy among the members of the society and hence gaining the approval necessary for its implementation (Ben-Peretz, 2008). In some cases, the proposed educational policy may be perceived to have far reaching negative impacts if implemented.

The media will therefore influence people’s opinions of the same resulting in implementation difficulty. Given the non-interactive nature of the media, people may easily end up developing negative attitudes towards a given policy on education. Therefore, the media just like the other stakeholders can have such a significant influence on the entire process of formulating and implementing the educational policies (May, 2001).

The essay has focused on the complex concept of parties involved in the formulation and implementation of educational policies and how each influences the process. The four major actors identified are; the legislative bodies, the leadership, the judiciary, and the government bureaucracy.

Other stakeholders discussed include the media, political parties, and the various interest groups. The essay has also highlighted a general model that can be used to illustrate stages through which public policy formation may take. However, the format is not fixed or meant to be followed in a step by step manner. Instead, it captures the basic processes involved and may take any order.

For instance, formation may come after the evaluation of a given policy for purposes of improving the provisions of the policy. It can be concluded that the various parties and actors in the formulation and implementation of educational policy can influence the process in their own special way. However, it may not be easy to categorize all of them in the order of degree of influence, particularly the first four parties.

Ben-Peretz, M. (2008). Policy-making in education: a holistic approach in response to global changes. Rowman & Littlefield Plc.

Cockrel, J. (2004). Public Policy-making in America . University of Kentucky Press

Denhardt, R. B. (2008). Theories of public organization (5 th ed.). Thomson Wadsworth

Dye, T. R. (2002). Understanding public policy . Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall

May, P. (2001). “Reconsidering Policy Design: The Policies and Publics.” Journal of Public Policy Process , 4 (2), 186-209

Schmidt, S. W., Shelly, M. C. & Crain, E. (2009). American Government and Politics: a focus on public policy formation. Cengage Learning

Silver, H. (1990). Education, change, and the policy process. Taylor & Francis

Wilson, R. H. (2008). Public policy and community: activism and governance. University of Texas Press

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IvyPanda. (2022, March 2). Understanding Educational Policies. https://ivypanda.com/essays/educational-policy/

"Understanding Educational Policies." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/educational-policy/.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Understanding Educational Policies." March 2, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/educational-policy/.

• Positive functions of bureaucracies
• A Discussion on Bureaucracy & Post-Bureaucracies
• Bureaucracy and Post-bureaucracy
• Relevance of Bureaucracy to Modern Organizations
• Problems with Bureaucracy
• Why We Need a Bureaucracy
• Bureaucracy in the New York City Department of Education
• Bureaucracy and Accountability in Higher Education
• Bureaucracy as a Concept
• Bureaucracy in Weber's Theory and Modern World
• ‘Sociometric Stability and the Behavioral Correlates of Peer Acceptance in Early Childhood’
• The Neo-Vygotskian Approach to Child Development
• Professional Issues for Child and Youth Care Practitioners in School Based Settings
• Studying and Practicing - The Best Ways to Learn?
• Repairing Donated Children Books

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• Section 9. Changing Policies in Schools

Chapter 25 Sections

• Section 1. Changing Policies: An Overview
• Section 2. Promoting Regular Community Assessment, Reporting, and Accountability
• Section 3. Using Tax Incentives to Support Community Health and Development
• Section 4. Supporting Local Ordinances to Modify Access to Unhealthy Products and Practices
• Section 5. Changing Policies to Increase Funding for Community Health and Development Initiatives
• Section 6. Promoting Community-Friendly Policies in Business and Goverment
• Section 10. Modifying Policies to Enhance the Quality of Services
• Section 11. Promoting Family-Friendly Policies in Business and Government
• Main Section

What do we mean by changing policies in schools?

Why should you work to change policies in schools, when should you try to change policies in schools, who should be involved in changing policies in schools, how do you change policies in schools.

When the Watsons came to Perryville High School for their eldest son’s first scheduled parent conference of ninth grade, they found something that neither ever saw in a school when they were students. In the hallways on every floor, as well as in the cafeteria, there were vending machines offering soda.

Rita Watson was a hospital nutritionist, and her husband, Mel, was an athletic trainer who worked with the football and baseball teams at the local university. They had always provided a healthy diet for themselves and their two sons, and had taught their children good eating habits. Both of them were well aware of the rise in childhood obesity – it was more and more visible on the streets of Perryville these days – and they knew that soda was a major contributor to that rise. They felt that the high school – which, after all, offered health classes that taught students about good nutrition – should not be offering kids drinks that could be bad for them.

They returned from the conference with a glowing report of their son’s progress, and the beginnings of a plan. As they researched the issue of soda and snack machines in high schools, they found that their presence was all too common. They also found that schools made a lot of money from contracts with soft drink companies – money that paid for extracurricular activities, supplies, and equipment. While the Watsons were supportive of these activities – both of their sons were athletes – they felt strongly that the school should be safeguarding students’ health, not encouraging unhealthy habits.

The couple set out to change the school policy on vending machines. They wanted them either removed from the school, or to offer only foods and drinks that contributed to, rather than harmed, children’s health. Aware that they had an uphill battle on their hands – Perryville High made over $50,000 in contracts and soda sales every year – they enlisted their friends and determined to keep at it until they were successful.

Sometimes school policies, like those that allow vending machines that sell unhealthy foods, can be harmful to students’ health or education. Sometimes, schools or school systems lack policies that would benefit students in particular ways. Sometimes their policies, formal or informal, are discriminatory or abusive of students’ rights. Parents, students, or concerned citizens often find themselves wanting to change school or school system policies…and many do. This section looks at what kinds of issues school policies might cover, and what it takes to change policies in a school system.

When the Community Tool Box was conceived, this section was meant to deal specifically with changing school policy to encourage healthy behaviors among students and discourage unhealthy ones. Since then, it has become obvious that the issue of school policy change is far too broad to confine to a single topic. We’ve therefore tried to include a range of possibilities to consider, of which health promotion is only one.

In the U.S., the variation among school systems – from state to state, from community to community, even from school to school – is enormous. There are obvious differences in size – many rural schools have fewer than 10 students a class, while some urban and suburban schools in large cities have thousands of students – but the variation doesn’t stop there. Looking at public schools alone, there are comprehensive and specialized high schools; charter schools; technical and trade high schools; magnet schools; alternative schools for students who can’t function in a standard classroom setting; and community-run schools, to mention only a few.

This section focuses on public schools. While private school policies are subject to change from parents and students as well, they present a different situation. Because students pay to attend, and the schools are financially dependent on parents’ good will, and because they aren’t subject to many of the state rules and regulations that public schools are, private schools are usually much more willing than public schools to bend rules, make exceptions, and change policy when asked to by parents.

The ways in which these schools are organized and run vary as much as their purposes. Some are relatively independent: what goes on in the school is largely determined by the principal and teaching staff. Some involve parents as partners in planning and implementing both curriculum and school management. Some, unfortunately, have to be concerned with student violence, and feature metal detectors and police patrols. Some have strict dress codes – sometimes to the point of requiring uniforms – others have none. Some are devoted to academics, and to sending as many students as possible to top-ranked colleges; others seem much more concerned with sports or other extracurricular activities. By and large, schools mirror the educational philosophy and attitudes of the people in their districts.

All of these schools have policies regarding everything from academic and curriculum requirements to the scheduling of lunches. System-wide policies are generally decided upon by the local school committee, while policies unique to a particular school are often set and implemented by the school staff.

Most school systems and schools are hierarchical – they have a clear (at least to themselves) chain of command, and you have to follow that chain in order to communicate with the system. In the U.S., the links in that chain are usually (from the top down):

• School Committee
• Superintendent of Schools
• Assistant Superintendents
• Other system-wide administrators (coordinators of curriculum, athletics, special education, business, physical plant)
• Teachers and other professional employees (nurses, guidance counselors and school psychologists, coaches)
• Support and custodial staff

Each of these levels is one you might have to deal with in attempting to change school policy. (See Tool #1 for a more detailed description of “the players.”)

In addition to whatever difficulties the system hierarchy might offer, there is the fact that most public school teachers and other non-administrative employees are unionized, a circumstance that can complicate (or, occasionally, make easier) a change initiative. The change you’re seeking might – or might appear to – conflict with the union contract, for instance, or might require a union member’s job description to change (a circumstance that would require union negotiations). Given the two factors of the management hierarchy and the union, advocates are often faced with the possibility of having to move the whole of a large and resistant bureaucracy in order to affect change.

There are alternatives. Some schools are relatively independent, and can make decisions without having to go through several layers of school system. Some unions are willing to make compromises in the service of better outcomes for students. Often, if the policy change in question relates only to a particular school, and if it’s not momentous, the principal or faculty can make the change quietly, without fanfare or bureaucratic hassle.

There are many situations where a major policy change initiative like that described in this section simply isn’t necessary. If you can accomplish your purpose – placing a crossing guard at a dangerous intersection, or opening the school gym in the late afternoon for community use – by simply explaining to the principal why it’s important, and offering to help make it possible, then that’s the way to go. If the change is small, reasonable, and doesn’t involve any major disruption of the school or the system, you can probably make it happen in a very low-key way. Even some major policy changes can be easy if the need for them is obvious. Don’t organize the community for a minor request – the simpler you can make things, the better.

In general, however, the School Committee is responsible for setting policy, and the Superintendent for carrying it out. Although the two advise and consult with each other, system-wide policy changes usually have to be approved by the School Committee, but that usually means that they must have the approval of the Superintendent as well, since most Committees value the Superintendent’s advice. If you can convince the Superintendent that change is necessary, it will probably happen, though perhaps not always as quickly as you’d like.

That doesn’t always mean that administrators and teachers will go along. In Philadelphia in the 1960’s, a Superintendent was hired to shake things up in a less-than-stellar school system. He instituted, with the support of the School Committee, a number of reforms that actually spoke to improving education in the district...but the teachers essentially ignored them. By a combination of foot-dragging and outright defiance, they were able to frustrate most of the Superintendent’s plans, and he was gone within a fairly short time. If he had involved the teachers in planning, the situation might have been different, but the reality is that policy change was instituted, and nothing happened anyway.

The Watsons wanted to eliminate vending machines or change their contents. What kinds of school policies might you want to change? The list is almost endless – and there is often someone who wants a change exactly opposite from the one you want. A short list of possibilities:

• Institute a no-smoking policy in the school system (for teachers and administrators as well as students).
• Serve healthy food in the cafeteria, and eliminate food that is only empty calories or actively bad for kids’ physical and mental development.
• Change the discipline system (to be more rigorous, less rigorous, student-generated, to involve parents, etc.).
• Address school prayer (eliminate it; institute a moment of silence; reinstitute school prayer – philosophies vary).
• Institute or revamp a health or sex education curriculum.
• Change the dress code.
• Beef up or change the academic content for students at various levels.
• Add ESL (English as a Second or Other Language) or bilingual programs for a growing immigrant population.
• Change sexual harassment policies to better protect students and staff.
• Change policies on student use of school computers.
• Change policies toward Channel 1 and other advertising during the school day.
• Tighten or loosen the requirements for participation in extracurricular activities.
• Change the limits of students’ freedom of speech in school newspapers.

Why might you want to change policies in schools?

There are seven overarching reasons to change school policies: to improve students’ health; to improve education; to meet the needs of particular groups; to improve classroom and school climate and culture; to protect students (and staff) from harm; to safeguard students’ rights; and to respond to a perceived community need.

Policies can be changed in different directions. Where a group in one community may be attempting to make schools more democratic, a group in another community may be concerned with making them less so. While it seems obvious to many which is the right direction, everyone has a right to try to change policy in the direction they think is appropriate. The one thing to remember is that any policy change should either be beneficial to or not detract from the educational experience of students.

To improve students’ (and others’) health.

Schools often teach health courses, but they don’t always practice, or encourage students to practice, what they preach. Some policies that actually might improve student health:

• Smoke- and tobacco-free schools
• School breakfast as well as lunch, with healthy food for both
• Elimination of soda and snack vending machines
• A physical education or exercise period every day
• A good K-12 sex education curriculum (age-appropriate at each grade level), as part of a good K-12 health education curriculum

To improve education.

Changes in curriculum, in educational content, in expectations for students, in teaching methods, in class size, in teacher independence – all these and many other factors can lead to a better educational experience for students. Some other possible changes involve:

• Class content.
• Textbooks and other instructional materials.
• Foreign language requirements.
• Interdisciplinary approaches.
• Advanced placement.
• Expectations for all students.
• The academic schedule.
• Student assessment (i.e. grades).
• Graduation requirements.

In 2004, a Dover, PA school board voted to include the teaching of “intelligent design” – the assumption that the world and the diversity of species are too complex to have evolved in the way Darwin described, and that there must, therefore, be a guiding hand – in the ninth grade biology curriculum. Religious beliefs notwithstanding, this assumption is not grounded in science and is more appropriate for a theology class. When a federal judge in 2005 struck down the vote as an unconstitutional attempt to teach religion in the guise of science, he dramatically brought about a change in the content of the curriculum.

There are many studies, going back over 50 years, that demonstrate that expectations determine to a very large extent how much students learn and how well they do in school. Raising the bar for everyone – starting with the assumption that all students are capable of learning just about anything, given the time and appropriate instruction, for instance – is likely to make a huge difference for those who would otherwise be mired at low levels all through their school careers.

Many high schools have in the past several years adopted block scheduling, which changes the standard class period from 40 or 50 minutes to twice that long, on the assumption that fewer, more intense classes give teachers better teaching opportunities, and create better learning experiences for students. Others have extended the academic year or the academic day. A few have attempted to schedule classes to match adolescents’ internal clocks, which are actually on a different schedule from those of adults and younger children.

To meet the needs of particular groups.

Some groups of students may need services in addition to those offered to the general school population, and it may take a policy change to obtain them. These groups include:

• Students with physical disabilities, including speech, hearing, and vision impairments.
• Students with emotional difficulties or mental illness.
• Students with developmental disabilities.
• Students with learning disabilities.
• Immigrants or other students who are not proficient in English.
• Teenage parents.

To improve classroom and school climate and culture.

“Classroom climate” is a term that refers to what a classroom feels like – student and teacher attitudes, the level of tension, whether the purpose of the classroom seems to be work or otherwise, etc.. The culture of a school can be considered in much the same way as the culture of a society – the customs, norms, standards, and behaviors that the majority of students, teachers, and other school personnel define as appropriate and approve of, as well as those that are disapproved by the majority.

The type of policy change needed in a given situation hangs on the character of the school. If the general atmosphere is too chaotic, it needs to be calmed; if it’s too rigid, it needs to be loosened up. Some of the potential targets of policy change that follow could be changed in either direction, depending upon what’s needed.

• Dress codes. These might be instituted, stiffened, eliminated, etc..
• Disciplinary systems. Discipline could be tightened to reduce in-school violence, changed to involve students in generating classroom rules and sanctions, loosened to allow particular activities, etc..
• Advising. A change might institute advising groups, change the focus of such groups, train teachers and/or counselors to be better advisors, etc..
• Counseling.
• Issues of tolerance. Promoting an atmosphere of acceptance and mutual respect among students of different races, ethnic backgrounds, language groups, sexual preferences, etc..
• Peer mediation and conflict resolution programs.
• Student-teacher and student-staff relationships.
• Democracy, both in the classroom and among teachers, administrators, and other school employees.

To protect students (and staff) from harm.

In some schools, particularly in gang- plagued urban neighborhoods – where a culture of violence may be entrenched among teens – this may mean protecting everyone from gang-related or random physical violence by students or outsiders. But, in any school system, it may also mean protecting students from physical or psychological bullying (by teachers as well as other students), from safety hazards, and from health hazards.

There is obvious overlap here among several of the reasons for working toward school policy change. Eliminating smoking protects students and staff from secondhand smoke. Halting bullying typically means changing the school culture, and redefining what is acceptable – for teachers as well as for students. The lines among reasons may blur, but the bottom line is always the same: to create the best possible educational experience for students.

Some changes that might help provide protection:

• Metal detectors and police patrols. These may not improve the learning experience, but they may be necessary to prevent bodily harm.
• Anti-bullying policies. As mentioned, these can only work by changing the school culture. If teachers and other staff don’t see bullying as a problem, it will continue.
• Repair of building safety hazards. Falling plaster, broken windows, unshielded heaters, etc..
• Elimination of the use of dangerous or toxic chemical solvents, cleaners, and pesticides.
• Halting corporal (physical) punishment. There are still many school systems that use corporal punishment to discipline students, and many more where it is permissible, but rarely, if ever, used.
• Careful oversight of athletics. Guarding against overtraining, inadequate protective equipment, heatstroke, potentially injurious training or punishment exercises, etc..

To safeguard students’ rights.

Children have rights, just as adults do, although those rights are tempered by children’s need for structure and protection. Nonetheless, when those rights are violated unnecessarily, policy change to safeguard them is in order. Some of the constitutional rights that should be attended to:

• Separation of church and state. All children have a right to practice their chosen religion or lack of religion, and to be free in school of any attempt to impose someone else’s beliefs on them. (This doesn’t mean religion shouldn’t be discussed or studied, but rather that neither a particular religion nor religion in general should be presented as “the truth,” nor made part of any required school activities.)
• Free speech and expression. Federal law, dating back at least to a 1969 Supreme Court decision that states that students “do not shed their Constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” protects students’ rights in this area to a point. The law makes exceptions particularly in the case of speech or expression that is obscene; slanderous or libelous; or that would disrupt the orderly functioning of the school (hate speech, for instance, or a call for a student strike).
• Civil rights. In a school context, these might include, among others, the right to question disciplinary proceedings; the right to a hearing; the right to equal treatment regardless of race, ethnic background, gender, religion, sexual preference, etc.; and the right to freedom from bodily harm.

To respond to a perceived community need.

This may have to do with the establishment of a particular course or program (a multilingual program as a response to an influx of immigrants, for instance, or a tolerance course to address recent hate crimes), safety or security concerns (traffic patterns, procedures for school visitors), or the timing of the school day or school year (in Aroostook County, Maine, for instance, students get a three-week break in September and October to help with the potato harvest).

Changes should obviously be attempted whenever it’s necessary, but there are some times that present especially good opportunities.

• Before the beginning of a new school year . Once school is in session, it’s difficult to convince a School Committee, administrators, or staff to change what they’re doing or to generate new policy. It’s much easier to effect change if you start well before you want the change to take place.
• When there’s an obvious need . When classes are overflowing with students who don’t speak English well, or when very few students are passing the state math exam, it’s easier to convince schools to examine the situation and change policies to address it.
• When a situation comes to light that makes a need obvious . When a sexual harassment case in the schools breaks, it may bring other students forward and highlight a problem that school officials have either been unaware of or have been successfully ignoring. The community – and, in the ideal, the schools as well – might well see this as an opportunity to change policy to protect students.
• When the School Committee or staff members do something that seems the opposite of good educational policy . Examples might be an ill-advised academic decision (eliminating foreign language study in the high school, for instance), misuse of funds, obvious racial discrimination, gross misconduct, or covering up or glossing over that misconduct.
• When there’s a clear threat to students’ or staff members’ health, safety, etc . This might be the time to bring up no-smoking policies, or metal detectors.
• When students’, parents’, or teachers’ basic rights are threatened . School policies may be contrary to existing law, or there may be no policies that govern the present situation. If students’ freedom of speech is being squelched, if teachers are being demoted or fired for voicing unpopular or critical opinions, if the wishes of a majority of parents for their children are systematically being ignored, there is probably support for policy change.

Who should be involved in changing school policies?

The more stakeholders – those affected by, or having to implement, the policy in question – that can be involved, the more likely it is both that the policy change will take place, and that it will be maintained once it’s made. Stakeholders include:

• The School Committee
• The Superintendent
• Other school administrators
• Particular groups affected by the proposed change (Hispanics, for a bilingual Spanish program, for instance)
• Groups interested in the issue addressed by the proposed change (e.g., police, for a violence prevention program; health professionals for a healthy school food initiative)
• Concerned citizens

School policy change, at least officially, has to happen from the inside. The School Committee (or at least the principal, if the change concerns only a single school) has to approve and institute the change. Furthermore, as we mentioned earlier, the school staff involved in implementing it have to actually do so, rather than just go through the motions, if the change is going to mean anything.

At the same time, policy change often originates from outside the system, and that’s where you come in. Schools, as we discussed, are hierarchical, and like many hierarchical organizations, they can be resistant to change of any kind. They are often particularly resistant to change that implies that what they’ve been doing is wrong, incompetent, or harmful. It may take a good deal of pressure from parents, students, community members, and/or officials to get them to respond.

This isn’t always true. Sometimes, the proposed policy change fills such a great need, or is so obviously beneficial that all it needs is to be suggested, and adoption quickly follows. The steps that follow apply equally to the easy and the difficult changes to put in place. You should always develop a strong rationale for changing policy and muster community support...and in the ideal situation, you won’t need them.

Marshal your support and begin to strategize.

The order of steps here is open to discussion. The author of this section sees the logical progression as one of putting together a supportive core group, and then learning all you can about the situation so that you can decide how to go about effecting change. The editor sees the logical order as the opposite: explore the situation, decide how to make the change, and then gather a support group. Since both of us have had experience in this area, it’s clear that there’s no one right answer. In reality, you’ll probably engage in at least part of both steps at the same time. Adapt your process to what makes the most sense in your situation.

Make contact with the allies you’ve identified. As you start to put a group together, people will bring others in. You don’t have to be secretive, but at this point, you might not want to publicize your effort. You may decide that the best approach is to see if you can accomplish what you want without going through the School Committee, in which case, the less publicity, the better.

It is often crucial to find allies within the school system, at as many levels as possible. Teachers, administrators, the Superintendent, sympathetic School Committee members – anyone who’s supportive of what you’re doing should be involved to the extent possible. It’s important not to place anyone in a compromising position, but the more allies you can get inside the system, the better your chances of success.

There are many situations in which allies inside the system may not be needed. That crossing guard we used as an example earlier, for instance – you probably won’t need a whole crew of teachers lending support to convince a principal or the superintendent that a child being hit by a car in front of the school would not be a good thing. Recruit teachers and other school employees when you need them, and realize when you don’t.

Once you assemble at least a core group, drawing from as many sectors of the community as possible (the more sectors, the more support you can muster), you need to consider how you’re going to approach the situation. There are many possibilities: going around the School Committee entirely, a simple request, taking time to build support on the Committee, threatening a lawsuit, creating massive publicity through the media, using the steamroller of angry parents and community members (if you have one, and it’s appropriate)--every approach will work in some situation, and no approach will work in every situation. That’s why planning is important, and why it’s important to involve others in your planning. You may need only a bare-bones idea of whom to approach, or you may need a full-blown strategic plan ; either way, you have to do some planning to decide on your course of action.

As with most situations covered in the Community Tool Box, we recommend a participatory, collaborative planning process wherever possible. You often end up with better ideas, and you’re more likely to end up with a plan that everyone has bought into, and will work hard to carry out. If you plan well, you’ll come up with an action that’s the simplest, least confrontational, and least expensive – in terms of time, people, and other resources – that you can take to solve the problem.

The other important tasks here are to work out systems of coordination and communication. If a particular organization takes the lead in a policy change effort, then that organization will usually act as the central point. If the effort is driven by an unorganized group of concerned parents, students, and others, they’ll need to establish some way to make sure that everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and to get the word out when action is needed. You don’t necessarily have to create a formal organization to accomplish these tasks, but it is important to set up a structure to make sure that they’re taken care of.

Do your homework.

The more you know about current policy, the school system, the issue your proposed changes relate to, and the individuals involved, the better your chances of success will be. The homework you need to do:

• Learn about current policy . Find out exactly what the current policy on the issue is. If it’s written down, be sure you have a copy. It’s possible that it already covers the situation, and that all you need to do is insist that it be followed. It’s also possible that it somehow conflicts with federal or state law, something that more homework and/or a lawyer can tell you. (It’s also possible that there’s no policy relating to your issue at all, which can often work to your advantage, since that may provide the opportunity for you to create one.)
• Know the issue inside out . Make sure you understand the issue well enough that you can answer any questions put to you, and anticipate and counter opponents’ arguments . Know your opponents’ arguments as well as your own, and make sure they can’t come up with anything you haven’t thought of.

If your opponents have legitimate arguments you have no answer for, then you should either incorporate those arguments into your thinking, or if it’s simply a true difference of opinion, acknowledge it as such. (But if it is, try to find as much real evidence as you can to back up your opinion.)

• Research the alternatives . If the current policy is unacceptable or isn’t working – or if there is no current policy – what should be proposed in its place? It would do no good to adopt a policy that, in its own way, is just as harmful or ineffective as the one it replaced. Look for best practices , or at least policies that have worked elsewhere , to achieve the results you want.
• Explain exactly why the change is necessary. If it’s to remedy a problem, you should be able to define and cite examples of the issue, demonstrate why it is a problem, and describe what the hoped-for results of policy change would look like. If the change is meant to fill a gap or add a needed program, you should be able to show convincingly how the change will benefit students (or the school, or the community), and how its consequences will be an improvement over the consequences of the current policy, or lack of one.
• Show how whatever costs are involved in the change are outweighed by its benefits.
• Refer to research that backs up your arguments. Studies that show improvements in various kinds of student outcomes – reading scores, attendance and graduation rates, etc. – as a result of the kind of change you’re seeking can help to convince the appropriate people to take action.
• Defend your proposal against attacks and counterarguments. This gets back to knowing opponents and their arguments.

In some cases, your answers to their concerns won’t convince them, because they’ll be sure they know you’re wrong despite all the evidence to the contrary. (Many people are convinced, for instance, that sex education encourages teens to be sexually active, even though studies consistently show the opposite.) If your opponents’ beliefs are based on emotion, you may be able to frame arguments that make your case from their emotional perspective. When that’s not possible, your arguments can still convince others, and provide enough pressure for policy change to take place.

• Consult with or recruit experts in the field to add credibility to your arguments. This may be easier if your community houses, or is close to, a college or university.

Make sure that the presence of an outside expert won’t increase tensions between two sides of the debate over policy change. While experts can often add the weight of authority to an argument, they can also be seen by teachers, superintendents, or School Committee members as arrogant, or as interfering in a community they know nothing about. Sometimes, the best “experts” you can find are students or parents in the community who’ve had first-hand experiences that back up the need for change. Personal stories are often the most compelling, especially when the people telling them are the neighbors and fellow community members of those listening.

• Learn everything you can about the structure of the school system and the personalities of those within it . You can’t deal with a school system without understanding how it operates. Once again, most systems are hierarchies, and hierarchies have protocols – rules – about whom to contact first, who makes decisions about various issues, etc.. If you don’t know the protocol, you can easily make a mistake that might offend or threaten someone whose support you need. An ally or sympathetic advisor within the system may be able to help you understand what your best approach might be.

Take the time to find out the structure of the chain of command in the system. Is it rigid or flexible? Who reports to whom? Where do you start if you have a complaint or want to discuss an incident or issue? At the lowest level? At the highest? Whom will you offend if you don’t follow protocol?

In most systems, the place to start is closest to the issue. An issue that relates to a single classroom should start with the teacher. If the resolution there is unsatisfactory, or if the teacher can’t help, the principal is the next step, followed by the superintendent, and ultimately by the School Committee. For a system-wide issue, you’d start with the superintendent. If the issue called for a system-wide policy change, you’d still start with the superintendent, if only to avoid blind-siding her. Ultimately, any major system-wide change has to come before the School Committee.

As important as the protocol are the personalities of the people involved. Who are the members of the School Committee? Which members are potential allies in a policy change effort, which are potential opponents, and which are the neutrals you’ll have to convince? What positions have they taken on the issue in the past? What’s important to them? Who are their friends and constituencies? Who is up for reelection or reappointment?

Occasionally, effecting a policy change can be a matter of electing or voting out the right person. A change of one or two seats on the School Committee can signal a shift in attitude and lead to new policy. That’s what happened in Dover, PA, the town where the School Committee decided to teach intelligent design along with evolution. Even before the judge’s ruling, eight of the nine School Committee members who had voted for the policy were defeated in an election, and their replacements quickly repealed it.

Attend School Committee meetings to understand how the Committee functions. Who are the powerful voices on the Committee? Whose opinions are respected, and whose are ignored? Who influences whom? Who responds to what kinds of arguments? Does the Committee function well as a body, or is it racked with disagreement and distrust?

The School Committee is the policy-setting body in most school systems. Some committees rely heavily on the advice and consent of the superintendent and/or teachers; others make their own decisions, sometimes based on reasoning, sometimes based on what they “know,” which may be considerable or very little, may be accurate or far-fetched, etc.. It’s important to know whose support you need and whose opposition to avoid if policy change is to be relatively easy.

How are decisions made within the system? The superintendent may be almost totally independent, or may only act on the direction of the School Committee. The standard is usually somewhere in between, with the superintendent free to develop programs and initiatives on his own and/or with staff, but having to get approval from the Committee to carry them out. The superintendent’s opinion carries a good deal of weight with most Committees. What’s his educational philosophy (or does he have one)? What’s his management style? Is he concerned with educational quality, or simply with keeping his job?

Other people to be acquainted with, at least at a distance, include other administrators, teachers, and staff, particularly union leaders and activists. Who is influential in the system, and whom do they influence? What are their priorities and concerns? What do they want and need (it’s often handy to know what you might be able to use as a bargaining chip)?

• Identify your allies and your opponents , both in the system and in the community . There may be groups that are obvious allies on a particular issue. More flexibility in the dress code would probably have strong student support; healthier cafeteria meals might garner support from parents, coaches, and health professionals.

Allies and opponents don’t always break down neatly into identifiable groups. Sometimes, where a policy doesn’t particularly benefit or harm a particular group, it’s simply a diverse collection of individuals on each side of the issue, disagreeing about the right way to do things. In that case, you have to identify allies and opponents one by one.

• Change of personnel . The problem may not be policy, but simply the way an individual or group chooses to do things. Changing the people may solve the problem. We’ve already mentioned defeating School Committee members in an election. Another possibility is advocating for the firing of a superintendent or other school employee.

Firing someone is a drastic step, and not easy to do. Ironically, the easiest person in a district to fire is often the superintendent, since she serves at the pleasure of the School Committee. Most other system employees are protected by union rules. They can be fired for cause, but the cause has to be documented, and has to be serious enough to justify the firing. The fact that you don’t like the way someone teaches, or disagree with the way he treats students, will not be enough unless there’s enormous community support for getting rid of him, or unless he’s clearly incompetent or has violated important rules.

• Reframing the current policy . The School Committee may be willing to redefine the policy in a way that addresses the issue, without actually instituting a change.
• Compromise . A compromise may not give you everything you want, but may satisfy the basic need that prompted the effort for change.
• Passage of a law . You may be able to get a bill passed that settles the issue once and for all – banning smoking in all public buildings in the state, for instance, or making corporal punishment illegal.
• A lawsuit . This should be a last resort, because it’s expensive, hugely time-consuming, and there’s no guarantee of the outcome. The chances are that by the time the suit is settled one way or the other, the students who were affected by the policy you wanted changed will have kids of their own. It’s important to know that the option for a lawsuit is there, however, if there’s no other alternative.

Work to get your proposal for policy change implemented.

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork for policy change, it’s time to start taking action. You should almost always start by following established procedure. (You might make an exception when there’s already a huge controversy over the issue in the schools and/or the community, and you know you have a fight on your hands.) That procedure varies from system to system (and sometimes even from school to school within a system), but if you’ve done your homework, you’ll know what it is. If following procedure doesn’t work – your proposal is rejected out of hand, no one will even give you a hearing, you’re blocked by bureaucratic stalling – it’s time for community action. We’ll look at both possibilities.

Draft the policy you want

It’s absolutely necessary to be crystal clear about what you want the policy change to accomplish. The best way to clarify is to draft the ideal policy, so that you know it speaks to exactly what you’re looking for. Then review your draft with both your core group of supporters and your allies inside the system, to filter out potential snags with community members and the institution. If you’re careful and thoughtful in this process, you’ll find and correct any flaws in your original ideas as well. Some areas to pay close attention to as you work on your draft:

• Beware of unintended consequences. Try to envision all the ways in which your new policy could play out, not just the “obvious” positive ones. You might be surprised at some of the possible negative results. Better to be surprised now, and to revise your policy to guard against negative possibilities, than to be much more unpleasantly surprised later.
• Possible misinterpretation, either by the community or by those who will carry out the policy. Make sure your draft means exactly what you think it means, and that its intent is unmistakable. If people don’t understand it, it could get twisted, either in the implementation, or in the way the community views it.
• Possible misuse, intentional or unintentional. Again, if you’re not clear, school personnel who misunderstand it, or with a philosophy different from yours, could, in the future, use your policy to do the opposite of what you worked for.
• Cultural offensiveness. Make sure that there are no aspects of the policy that are culturally offensive to particular groups, unless you’re trying to correct an attempt to impose cultural or religious values on the majority, as seen in the evolution example earlier in this section.

Some policies that may seem necessary to one group – sex education, for instance – may in fact be offensive to some parents. The fair way to deal with this is to give those offended the option of excluding their children from the policy. Exceptions could also, for example, be applied by providing exclusion from a no-hats policy for Orthodox Jews or Muslim women. This can get complicated if the kids don’t want to be excluded from the policy, and may be a counseling issue, and involve consultation with parents. Perhaps, if the policy change in question is somewhat controversial, some of that can be built in. The question arises about what to do when the conflict is between fact and belief. We’ve already mentioned that many people are certain sex education encourages adolescent sexual activity, even when it’s demonstrated to them that studies overwhelmingly find the opposite. There may be little you can do in such situations, or you may be able to put your arguments within the context of their world view. Offering a choice seems to be the best compromise, but your opponents may object even to that, in the belief that they should protect all children, not only their own.

Make your policy change effort as collaborative as possible. When you can, suggest setting up a committee of parents, students, teachers, administrators, School Committee members, and/or other interested citizens to consider alternatives, language, etc. to present to the School Committee.

In general, start your discussions at the lowest responsible level in the hierarchy .

This is both a matter of courtesy and a good strategic choice. Unless you already have an adversary relationship (and sometimes especially if you have an adversary relationship), it’s usually a bad idea to spring something on a school administrator with no advance warning. Suddenly appearing in a principal’s office with a group of angry parents, for instance, without first discussing with her the situation they’re angry about is more likely to make her defensive and entrenched in her position than to open her up to considering policy changes.

Furthermore, it is very much in your interest to gain the support of the person(s) who will have to carry out the proposed policy. If you have to go farther up the chain, that support will help at each level.

The importance of lower-level support depends upon how power is viewed and exercised in the system. In a well-managed system, a policy that has the support of teachers and principals is very likely to be viewed favorably by the superintendent, and in turn likely to be passed by the School Committee. In a system where the superintendent or Committee is too fond of wielding power, lower-level support may be seen as a challenge rather than a recommendation, and may doom a proposal. In such a situation, while it's still important to have the support of teachers and principals, you may have to use pressure from parents and the community to sway the School Committee.

For a system-wide issue, protocol usually requires that you start with the superintendent, who will, if he views it favorably, work with you to present a proposal for policy change to the School Committee. Even if he doesn’t lend support, he won’t be surprised by your eventual approach to the School Committee. (If you’re seeking to change a School Committee-generated policy, start with the Committee.)

An advantage to starting at a low level is that sometimes, an issue can be handled at that level without going further. In many systems, a school principal can institute policy in his school (assuming it doesn’t have system-wide implications) without having to get permission from the superintendent or the School Committee. A teacher may be able to institute classroom policy to correct a problem, or may be able to change course content without any fanfare.

If your issue can be resolved at a lower level, you may be able to save yourself a lot of trouble. If, however, you want to see broader changes, it still makes sense to start with the people who’ll have to implement the policy – especially if you can enlist their support. At the very least, they won’t be furious at you for sneaking up on them with something new. If you’re successful at this lower level, many of the steps below won’t be necessary. If you’re put off or denied, simply go up to the next step on the ladder, until you get to the School Committee.

Get your group on the School Committee agenda .

If the Superintendent and some Committee members are involved, they can make sure that you get enough time for a proper presentation.

Present the proposed policy change at a School Committee meeting .

For real results, you have to do more than simply show up. Here’s where your prior organizing will pay off.

Although the assumption here is that your group will present the policy itself, it may be even better to have it presented by a sympathetic School Committee member or superintendent. That will give it credibility and show that there’s support for it within the system.

• Pack the meeting with supporters from as many sectors of the community as possible. Students, parents, teachers, interested community members, groups that are concerned with the issue the policy addresses (health professionals if it concerns smoking, for instance, or police if it concerns violence) – the more representation you can produce, the more obvious it is that there’s broad-based enthusiasm for your proposal.
• Do all you can to gain media coverage. Call your media contacts, send out press releases, etc., to assure that the media will be there, or at least report on the issue.

In some communities, the media are always there – public access cable often covers School Committee meetings, and in large cities, they’re often covered by the network affiliates or by popular cable news stations. Most communities at least have newspaper reporters present. You should keep this in mind. Never say or do anything that you’re not prepared to see on TV or in the newspaper, even if the discussion gets heated. You want the media there to generate positive publicity for your proposal, not to make you or your supporters look bad.

• Choose spokespeople carefully. If several members of your group are allowed to speak, use the opportunity to showcase people who are articulate (but not apparently too different from most of the community), represent a range of stakeholders (parents, students, particular groups affected), can present themselves respectfully but firmly, and have compelling stories to tell or arguments to make. Personal stories, particularly, can make a powerful impression, especially if those who tell them are familiar to the audience, or are people with whom they can identify.
• Make sure your message is clear and consistent, no matter who is delivering it. What your group has to say should be straightforward, informative, and non-confrontational (this isn’t always possible, but do your best). It should be backed up with facts, statistics, study results, the experience of other school systems, and/or educational (or psychological or scientific) theory. Most importantly, it should emphasize how this will benefit students, education, and/or the community. (If it won’t, why are you advocating for it?)
• Be prepared for opposing arguments. Make sure you can counter them with hard facts and other substantiation. If your group is asked a non-trivial question you can’t answer (no matter how much homework you do, you can’t cover everything), offer to find out the answer and bring it to the next meeting. Even if the question is trivial, treat it with respect unless it’s obviously meant to ridicule or humiliate you. If it is meant as ridicule, answer it with humor, not anger.
• Respect the Committee’s time limits, but don’t allow yourself to be pushed aside without making your point.
• Respect the Committee’s decision-making procedures. Some School Committee bylaws may mandate a one-or two-meeting delay on policy decisions. Often, even in the absence of such a bylaw, major policy decisions are not made the first time a policy change is brought up. Rather, time is allowed at one or more future meetings for more discussion before the change is brought to a vote. If this is the case, just be sure that you continue to produce a large, diverse, and vocal group of supporters at School Committee meetings leading up to the vote, and that your message remains consistent.

If it looks like you may not be successful, there are some ways you may be able to salvage the situation. One is to be sure you have a fall-back position, a variation of what you’re asking for that may not give you everything you want, but that will get at the most important points while at the same time dropping the most controversial or difficult part of your proposal. Another tactic might be to agree to, or even advocate for, more study of the proposal. Given time to reflect (and time for you to gather your support), the Committee might realize that a controversial or difficult step is nonetheless necessary for the good of the students and the system.

If your proposed policy change is rejected, regroup and strategize again.

There are a number of reasons your proposed change might have been rejected.

In a sense, this may be even harder to deal with than the actual issue at hand. Most schools are, in fact, organized around the needs of the adults involved, rather than those of the children. “The way we’ve always done it” is often the path of least resistance, and steering people off that path can be extremely difficult.

• The Committee honestly felt that it simply wasn’t in the best interests of the students. If you continue to believe they’re wrong, you should continue to push for change. Put together an even more impressive array of facts and figures to support your arguments, continue to build community support in order to exert pressure on the Committee, invite Committee members to be part of a group to study the issue, work for the support of teachers, etc.. Over time, if your proposed change really does make sense and will benefit students, it’s reasonable to expect that you’ll bring enough Committee members around to get the policy change approved.
• The Committee rejected the proposal because the change wouldn’t fit into the way things are done in the system. If a change is educationally beneficial for students, it should happen unless it actually isn’t affordable (Everyone knows that very small classes are better for students, but most systems can’t raise enough taxes to make them possible) or it would impose an unfair workload on teachers and administrators. If the reason is simply that it’s too much trouble, or that “we don’t do things that way,” that’s a failure of the Committee’s and the system’s duty to students. Your efforts should be aimed toward pointing this out, and, again, continuing to build support and substantiation.
• The Committee rejected the proposal for reasons that are irrelevant to education, mistaken, irrational, or simply unacceptable (lack of belief in evolution, unwillingness to confront the fact that a large percentage of teens are sexually active, racial prejudice, etc.). In this situation, you may have to convince the community either that the Committee is dead wrong, or that their reasons conflict with sound educational practice, logic, and/or common decency (not to mention the Constitution). That often calls for community action – organizing your support, using the media, and engaging in various kinds of direct action.

The reality is that a social action approach may be necessary in any of these three situations, if the School Committee proves immovable and you believe the proposed change is necessary for the educational, physical, or psychological welfare of students. Some social action tactics that might prove helpful:

• Organize to defeat oppositional School Committee members at the next election . This may take some patience. Some communities elect a whole School Committee at once for a set period (usually 2 or 3 years). Others stagger three- or four-year terms, so that only a third or a quarter of the School Committee is up for reelection in any given year. That means that you may have to wait two or three years to actually gain a favorable majority on the Committee, even if all your candidates win.
• Use the media . You can get your message out widely and quickly through careful use of the media . That involves, among other activities, establishing relationships with (sympathetic) reporters, editors, station managers, etc.; holding press conferences, orchestrating letters to the Editor, and making sure you get coverage for events and actions you stage; and contacting state- and nation-wide media, to broaden your support and put even greater pressure on the School Committee.
• Maintain a vocal presence at School Committee meetings . If it’s appropriate, continue to pack meetings with supporters, and call for the policy change at every opportunity. Media coverage of meetings will help spread the word. The worse you’re treated by the School Committee the worse they’ll look and the more sympathetic the community will be to your cause, as long as you remain reasonable and respectful at meetings.
• Take direct action . Stage public meetings, rallies, demonstrations, petition drives, picketing, and other events meant to draw attention to and explain the need for policy change. Such events will also demonstrate the extent of your support, and put pressure on the School Committee, as an elected body, to respond to public opinion.
• Recall the School Committee (or the members of the Committee blocking your proposal) . This takes less time than the election process, but is dependent on there being a recall clause in the community’s (or the School Committee’s) bylaws. If there is, obtaining a certain number of signatures can force a recall election. Before you take this route, you should be sure that there’s at least a reasonable chance that the recall will succeed, and that the people who take the places of recalled School Committee members will be sympathetic to the policy change you want. Recall elections tend to create community divisions and animosities that can take years – even lifetimes – to heal, and shouldn’t be entered into lightly.
• Work to pass legislation that will make your policy change into law statewide . If you already have a legislative champion, or a relationship with one or more legislators, this may be a good direction to take. If you’re starting from scratch, it could still be worthwhile, but it will take much longer, and involve a major organizing effort. The advantage is, of course, that you won’t have to fight the battle over policy change again, and you’ll be benefiting far more students than those in your own community.
• File a lawsuit . As explained earlier,this is usually a last resort because of its expense and the length of time it’s likely to take. On the other hand, the threat or actual filing of a suit may be enough to move the School Committee to change its mind. A sympathetic attorney (there may be one among your supporters) can be helpful in developing strategy here.

Once you gain the policy change you’re seeking, reorganize and tackle the next issue.

Whether this effort was easy or difficult, you’ve put together a group that has worked together to effect a policy change . . . but your work’s not done. As with so much else described in the Tool Box, you need to maintain the gains you’ve made – make sure that the policy change is not only carried out, but carried out in the way that’s most beneficial to students, and continued for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, it’s unlikely that this is the only change necessary, either in the school system or in the community. Take some time to savor your victory, to celebrate, to congratulate yourselves . . . and then get back to the job of making the school system and the community the best it can be.

Sometimes, it’s necessary to seek policy change in schools or school systems, in order to enhance or protect the educational benefits to students, the physical and psychological health and safety of students and school staff, or the management and integrity of the system. Because schools and school systems tend to be hierarchical and difficult to move, this can lead to conflict or impasse, leaving students to suffer the effects of inferior learning opportunities, deteriorating or dangerous schools, or unfair or abusive treatment by school personnel or other students.

It’s most effective to work collaboratively with the School Committee, the teachers’ union, and parents, students, and interested community members to arrive at the best solution to the problem and change and oversee policy accordingly. When there’s resistance to that course – because of a sincere difference of opinion, because of resistance to change of any sort, or because of unacceptable assumptions or ideas on the part of the policy makers (racism, for example), conflict of some sort may be inevitable. By putting together a strong and diverse community group of supporters of change, and

by using the leverage that group commands – public pressure, media attention, research into best practices, etc. – you can achieve the change you’re aiming for. The less nasty and the more collaborative you can make the process, the better the chances will be that the next change effort – and there will be a next change effort; there always is – will be easier.

Online Resources

Eight steps to policy change from North Carolina Tobacco-Free School s.

ERIC Digest 148  – school dress policies (uniforms and other dress codes as violence prevention).

Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network . Gets you to a huge resource for gay/lesbian/straight issues.

How to start a gay/lesbian/straight alliance in a school , a   PowerPoint.

Kit on changing food policy in schools from Massachusetts Public Health Association

Site of Californians for Pesticide Reform – how to change school policy (decent rules for any issue).

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

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Making Schools Safe for Students

High-profile school shootings, like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have raised concerns that schools can be dangerous places for students. Yet the data suggest that school crime rates have dropped nationwide since the early 1990s and that the student victimization rate declined by 70% from 1992 to 2013 ( see exhibit 1 ). [1]

To the general public, though, thoughts on school safety are often shaped by high-profile school shootings and other tragic incidents that dominate a news cycle. For educators, however, issues such as bullying, harassment, and school discipline policies are at the forefront of their thoughts and can affect school safety on a daily basis.

“It is very important that we continue working to understand and prevent mass shooter events,” said Phelan Wyrick, director of the Crime and Crime Prevention Research Division within NIJ’s Office of Research and Evaluation. “However, we cannot allow the saliency of mass shooter events to overshadow the importance of a wide range of more common safety issues that schools face.”

Shootings are just one of many traumatic events that children may face at school. They may also be threatened or injured by a weapon, be bullied, be physically assaulted, or be affected by natural disasters.

In support of stakeholder efforts to ensure that students are safe in school, NIJ has funded numerous initiatives over the years that evaluate school safety practices. These efforts range from how to prevent tragic incidents like school shootings to how to promote a positive school environment where day-to-day challenges, like bullying and harassment, can be reduced.

Historical School Safety Efforts

Although federal programs and policies related to school safety can be traced to the early 1970s, the United States did not begin collecting national data on school violence until 1989, [2] when the School Crime Supplement was added to the National Crime Victimization Survey. The School Crime Supplement was conducted for a second time in 1995 and then became a biannual survey starting in 1999.

A series of school shootings in the late 1990s, including the one that occurred at Columbine High School, led to new programs that examined the thinking, planning, and other pre-attack behaviors of school shooters. One such program was the Safe School Initiative led by the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Secret Service.

As part of this initiative, NIJ supported a 2002 study that explored the behavior of student-attackers in an effort to identify information that could help communities prevent future attacks. [3] The study evaluated 37 incidents of targeted school violence in the United States between December 1974 and May 2000. It found that these 37 attacks were rarely sudden or impulsive. In 95% of the cases, the attacker had developed the idea to harm before the attack.

Perhaps most importantly, the study found that 93% of the evaluated attackers behaved in a way that caused others to be concerned or that indicated a need for help. In fact, in more than 75% of the cases examined, the attacker had told a friend, schoolmate, or sibling about the idea before taking action. But the person who was told about the attack rarely brought the information to an adult’s attention.

“That’s the critical element if we’re going to prevent, reduce, or head off these types of incidents from occurring,” Wyrick said. “We need to have mechanisms in place, school cultures amenable to folks reporting that information.”

The study also showed that there was no accurate profile of a school shooter. The shooters came from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds and ranged in age from 11 to 21 years old. Some came from intact families with ties to the community and others came from foster homes with histories of neglect. The academic performance of attackers ranged from excellent to failing.

Evaluating School Safety Technology

School security measures have increased since the Columbine shooting. Today, nearly 100% of schools serving 12- to 18-year-olds use at least one safety or security measure. [4] This includes locked doors, security cameras, hallway supervision, controlled building access, metal detectors, and locker checks. However, use of these measures varies by factors such as the school’s population and location.

NIJ has long supported studies on school safety technology, including one by Sandia National Laboratories. Released in 1999, The Appropriate and Effective Use of Security Technologies in U.S. Schools covered the effectiveness of a variety of school safety technologies. The report also provided basic guidelines for law enforcement agencies and school administrators as they decide which security technologies should be considered when developing safe school strategies. It helped schools and law enforcement partners analyze their vulnerability to violence, theft, and vandalism, and suggested possible technologies to address these problems effectively.

Overall, the report stated that security technologies are not the answer to all school security problems. No two schools will have identical and successful security programs, meaning that a security solution for one school cannot just be replicated at other schools with complete success. However, many pieces of technology can be excellent tools if applied appropriately.

More recently, NIJ has supported other school safety technology evaluations through the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative (CSSI). This initiative includes a report from the Library of Congress outlining federal school safety efforts between 1990 and 2016 and two complementary projects by the RAND Corporation and Johns Hopkins University, which assess current school technology and outline school needs.

These CSSI reviews of school safety technology shared a major conclusion: No one technology, school climate intervention, or other school safety strategy can guarantee school security or eliminate the underlying cause of school violence. An integrated approach that includes emergency response plans, drills, a positive school climate, and situational awareness is called for, and school security plans must be tailored to the needs of each individual school.

Comprehensive School Safety Initiative

Safety and security technology is just one tool in a comprehensive program that each school should develop to create a safe learning environment for students and staff. NIJ’s CSSI aims to make clear that there is no one solution to ensuring students are safe in school.

Developed following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, CSSI is one of NIJ’s latest and largest investments in school safety research. Projects funded through CSSI examine different factors from the individual, school, community, and family levels that affect school safety.

A unique program of research for NIJ, CSSI provided funding for both implementation and evaluation as well as research projects that examine root causes. Under a directive from Congress, NIJ allocated approximately $75 million per year between fiscal years 2014 and 2017. Two-thirds of that funding went toward implementing school safety projects, and one-third went toward studying the impact of each program and the causes and consequences of school-related violence. Some CSSI projects have concluded and some are ongoing. They have covered or aim to address a wide range of school safety subjects, including school resource officer training, assessments of social media threats, bullying prevention, and positive behavioral interventions, among other topics.

This initiative will compile a large amount of information over a very short period of time, but the next few years will bring a wealth of knowledge on the effectiveness of school safety practices.

“We’re trying to move the field further and more quickly with so much information in such a short period of time,” said Mary Carlton, an NIJ social science analyst.

Through CSSI, NIJ has funded 96 studies with a focus on K-12 schools. These grant-funded projects are taking place in more than 30 states and more than 2,700 schools. The initial projects are still in the final stage, so it is too soon to assess the impact of the initiative. It may take six to seven years, if not longer, for the projects to reach their conclusions and for the results to be disseminated. Even after the last set of findings is published, taking that body of work and synthesizing it for the field may require another year or so of work, said Nadine Frederique, an NIJ senior social science analyst.

Moving Forward

School shootings are frightening and make headlines. However, today’s students are less likely to be threatened or injured with a weapon at school, including a gun, than they were 10 years ago.

But educators and public safety officials continue to grapple with the challenge of creating and maintaining a safe and healthy learning environment for students. Threats to schools and student safety continue from both inside and outside the school and from adults and other individuals, including students.

NIJ has sponsored numerous studies on the issues of school safety and school climate over the past 25 years and continues to support efforts to improve the safety of students in school. The outcomes of CSSI-funded research will provide valuable context for school officials in the coming years. The 96 projects funded through this effort examine a variety of school safety issues and offer an opportunity for educators, the community, and law enforcement to better understand the factors that most affect school safety.

About This Article

This article was published as part of NIJ Journal issue number 281 , released June 2019

[note 1] National Institute of Justice, “ School Safety: By the Numbers ,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, November 2017, NCJ 251173.

[note 2] Mary Poulin Carlton, Summary of School Safety Statistics , Comprehensive School Safety Initiative Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, July 2017, NCJ 250610.

[note 3] Robert Fein et al., Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates , Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program, and U.S. Secret Service, National Threat Assessment Center, July 2004.

[note 4] Carlton, Summary of School Safety Statistics .

About the author

Blair Ames is a digital journalist and contractor with Leidos.

Cite this Article

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• Summary of School Safety Statistics
• NIJ Journal Issue No. 281

Language Policy and Political Issues in Education pp 211–225 Cite as

Language Policy in Classrooms and Schools

• Kate Menken 4 &
• Ofelia García 5  
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• First Online: 31 August 2017

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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Language and Education ((ELE))

Schools are crucial sites for the implementation of language policies. After gaining recognition within the broader field of language policy in the 1980s, language education policy has grown swiftly. While earlier work in language policy focused on the resolution of language “problems” in colonial and postcolonial nation building efforts, typically by analyzing official top-down documents aimed at deliberate language change, in the 1990s–2000s researchers increasingly adopted a critical perspective with an interest in ensuring that language education policies do not create or perpetuate social inequities. This critical focus was followed by the current focus on educator agency, in which research methods informed by anthropology have been favored as scholars increasingly conduct ethnographic research inside schools. This has resulted in greater attention to the human dimensions of policies as living and dynamic and acknowledgment that educators are at the epicenter of language policy processes, as they are called upon to interpret policies and implement them within their classrooms. We describe how understandings of the dynamic and fluid language practices of bilinguals coming from the new body of translanguaging research hold great promise for shaping the next wave of language education policy research. After overviewing current challenges, we conclude by offering a set of questions for future research.

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Menken, K., García, O. (2017). Language Policy in Classrooms and Schools. In: McCarty, T., May, S. (eds) Language Policy and Political Issues in Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02344-1_17

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Plymouth Elementary School

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Policies & Procedures

Introduction

Schools have policies for several reasons. Policies establish rules and regulations to guide acceptable behavior and ensure that the school environment is safe for students, teachers and school staff. School policies also help create a productive learning environment.

Rules and Regulations

In order for rules and regulations to be in place and enforced, policies are created, often by the local school board . Having these policies in place means there are determined procedures for how school operations are handled, down to every minute detail, so that educators, staff and students know what is expected and can act accordingly. This saves time, prevents confusion and unifies the school.

Safe Learning Environments

Students, teachers and staff members deserve to feel physically and psychologically secure in their environment. In order to create this environment, policies are created and instated that establish safety standards for the physical environment and mental state of students and staff. This is done by creating policies such as fire drills, anti-bullying policies and mental health guidelines.

Setting Goals and Establishing Productivity

In order for an institution to encourage higher learning, policies must be in place that establish goals as set forth by the school board. These policies establish standards and help hold schools and educators accountable to the public. This is important for relating education to the community and making it responsible to the larger world. Accountability through the use of goal-oriented policies ensures that students are receiving a valuable education.

Policies are important because they help a school establish rules and procedures and create standards of quality for learning and safety, as well as expectations and accountability. Without these, schools would lack the structure and function necessary to provide the educational needs of students. Ultimately, policies are necessary to the success and safety of a school.

Source:  “The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher”; Harry K. Wong & Rosemary T. Wong; 2009

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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

The Biggest Policy Challenges Schools Are Facing Right Now

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There are many education policy challenges facing schools at the moment.

Today, two educators share which ones they think are the most important ones.

‘Legislative Attacks’

Keisha Rembert is a lifelong learner, equity advocate, and award-winning educator. She is the author of The Antiracist English Language Arts Classroom , a doctoral student and an assistant professor/DEI coordinator for teacher preparation at National Louis University. Prior to entering teacher education, Keisha spent more than 15 years teaching middle school English and U.S. history.

George Orwell’s words in his book 1984 resonate deeply today: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” These words hold immense relevance as we traverse the landmine of educational bills that have enacted book bans; restricted the exploration of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity topics; and prohibited the teaching of historical truths or any discourse that may result in “ discomfort, guilt, or anguish .”

In the past year, education-focused legislative attacks have become palpable and personal. We have seen an influx of anti-LGBTQIA+ bills , totaling a whopping 283, nationwide. In Florida, the value of AP African American Studies has been questioned, undermined, and dismissed as “ lacking educational value. ”

And critical race theory has become persona non grata, a scapegoat to thwart discussions and actions toward racial justice in our polarized American political landscape. These examples highlight the trend of states’ attempts to not only control curricula, learning, and discourse but also to stifle justice and constrict bodies and intellectual progress, negatively impacting the whole of society.

According to a 2022 Rand Corp survey, one-fourth of the teachers reported being influenced by legislative actions, pending and imposed, to change their lessons. It is scary to think that state legislatures, without any educational expertise, wield the power to manipulate knowledge and rewrite history. In the words of Paulo Freire, “Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people—they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.” And thus, the barrage of these oppressive educational policies are not only unconscionable but also fundamentally untenable for student and societal success.

We find ourselves at a critical juncture, where the exclusion of diverse perspectives and the suppression of uncomfortable truths have the potential to distort our collective consciousness. It is in recognizing and embracing the history of the most marginalized among us that we truly learn about ourselves, our growth as a society, and the ideals to which we aspire.

These dehumanizing legislative impositions hinder our students’ understanding of our shared history and also represent a dangerous path that encroaches on our personal and academic freedoms. They undermine our capacity to nurture students’ critical-thinking skills and hamper our ability to cultivate a citizenry that values democratic ideals and engages thoughtfully in meaningful change.

As educators, we must continue to fight and offer our support to those living under oppressive state regimes. In our classrooms and beyond, we should:

• Advocate academic freedom: We cannot be passive bystanders while the rights of our students, selves, and colleagues are at stake. We must actively engage in discussions and initiatives that protect and promote freedom of all kinds within our schools, communities, and nation. We must reject the notion that any student should be denied the invaluable opportunity to be exposed to truth, diverse and inclusive perspectives, ideas, and experiences. Our championing of freedom creates an environment that fosters critical thinking, humility, and a deeper understanding of our world.
• Foster critical thinking and humility: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The only way to deal with unjust laws is to render them powerless by ignoring them.” It is time to lean into what we know is right and teach our students to do the same. To navigate this time of distortions and mistruths, our students need to be analytical thinkers who are discerning, open-minded, and equipped to challenge rhetoric and resist the manipulative forces that are restricting knowledge and controlling narratives.
• Uphold the ideals of democracy and global humanity: In the face of state-led oligarchies, it is our duty to instill in our students civic literacy, agency, collective responsibility, and the need to dismantle oppressive systems. Our students must be justice seekers who build bridges as compassionate citizens.

If we are not vigilant, we risk facing a fate reminiscent of the residents of Oceania depicted in 1984 , where “every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture repainted, every statue and street building renamed, every date altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Censorship is antithetical to freedom; it begets spirit-murdering curricula violence, posing a direct threat to the mental and emotional well-being of students whose histories, identities, and personhood are silenced and deemed inconsequential and without value. By perpetuating harm, these laws also establish a dangerous precedent for future educational policies. The brevity of this moment demands action. If education is the ultimate pursuit of liberation, then the freedom it promises hangs in the balance.

STEM Access

Kit Golan ( @MrKitMath ) is the secondary mathematics consultant for the Center for Mathematics Achievement at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.:

Despite the demand for mathematical thinkers, our country continues to push data-illiterate and math-phobic graduates into the workforce. As such, a vital issue facing public schools today is inequitable access to high-level math courses, which acts as a gatekeeper for many who might enter science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers.

Most course sequences prevent students from reaching rigorous math classes, especially students of color. Often, students who do have access to these courses come from privileged backgrounds whose families have invested time and money outside of the school day to “race to the top.” Regardless, many colleges use AP Calculus as a determining factor for entrance and class placement even though most students don’t reach this or other high-level math courses that better align with their career aspirations due to systemic barriers.

Few districts have created flexible course sequences that allow students to reach high-level math classes by senior year, meaning many students who do not accelerate in middle school may never be able to reach higher math classes without taking multiple math classes simultaneously or attending summer school.

Many middle school students do not know their career trajectory; having the option to delay acceleration until junior year and take a compressed Algebra 2/precalculus course would allow more students to access rigorous courses without being barred in middle school. Additionally, because current Algebra 2 courses focus heavily on symbolic manipulation that modern graphing technology renders obsolete, a compacted course could focus more on developing the conceptual understandings needed by eliminating this content. Yet, few schools have made this transition despite the obvious benefits.

Truly, this is a larger issue of tracking and acceleration for some students. Despite the consensus that sorting practices have a disproportionately negative impact on outcomes for marginalized students (NCTM, 2018), many parents still advocate for their children to be accelerated. Because teachers frequently struggle to differentiate for mixed-ability math classes, students who are ready for additional challenges may slip through the cracks as their teachers attempt to support struggling students’ access to grade-level content.

I’m not advocating separating these students into different streams, as the reality is that no matter how well you think you’ve grouped students by ability, there is no such thing as a truly homogeneous class; student variation is one of the only constants in education! Instead, teachers need additional professional development, time, and support (and reduced class sizes!) to better be able to differentiate their classes to ensure that all students have both access and challenge.

This is a systemic issue that requires structural changes beyond individual teachers. Sadly, most middle and high schools rarely have schedules allowing students to gain additional experience with math unless they are pulled from arts or other elective courses. Meanwhile, community colleges have recently begun to replace “developmental math” (their “low track”) courses with co-requisite models where students would enroll in both a credit-bearing course and an additional support class designed to help them gain access to the math content of the former. How might K-12 schools replicate that idea to provide additional support to students who need it?

Ultimately, the issue facing public schools is whether AP courses should be considered a privilege for the few who have access to outside resources or if it should be accessible to any who are interested in pursuing that pathway. Under the current paradigm, only students who take additional math courses outside of their standard school day or who are able to double up on math courses early in high school are able to reach AP Calculus by senior year. It’s outrageous that students who take Algebra 1 “on time” in 9th grade are considered remedial math students when measured along the path to AP Calculus. It’s past time we updated high school math options to reflect the 21st-century needs rather than settle for the status quo of the past century.

NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics). (2018). Catalyzing change in high school mathematics: Initiating critical conversations . Reston, VA: Author.

Thanks to Keisha and Kit for contributing their thoughts.

They answered this question of the week:

What do you think is the most important education policy issue facing public schools today, why do you think it is so important, and what is your position on it?

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email . And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 12 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list here .

The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Mary Louise Culpepper

How to write an effective reflective policy essay.

We seek a reflective policy essay as part of your application. Make sure yours is an effective one.

The reflective policy essay has been designed for us to learn more about your experience with real-world policy challenges, as well as your ability to learn from mistakes and to problem-solve. This written work will enable us to understand more about the professional and personal experiences that have shaped your public service passion, and to understand better what you might bring to the MPP classroom.

What is a reflective policy essay?

We are looking for essays that tackle policy and/or policy implementation problems that you have experienced.

First, we want you to briefly describe something you’ve experienced where a lack of good policy and/or implementation procedures led to bad outcomes or unintended consequences. Please be specific, and make sure we understand your personal connection to the situation. We do not want a generic, theoretical policy essay. You have 300 words for this first section.

In the next section, we would like you to analyse what went wrong and what could have been done differently. Be sure to make clear your point of view in this experience: as a public servant, a citizen, or a commentator. Remember, we want to understand how you think and learn, and what unique experiences you have had that will enrich the classroom experience for others in the diverse MPP cohort. In conclusion, we want to see concrete policy proposals that would correct the problems you identified and produce positive outcomes going forward. An excellent policy brief will consider alternatives and address barriers to implementation as well as costs. It will also bring in evidence to support your arguments. You have 1200 words for this second section.

The importance of critical thinking

This essay should demonstrate your ability to think critically and creatively. It should also demonstrate your commitment to positive change and your understanding of real-world policy challenges. It is an important part of the application and we are looking forward to reading your submission!

Mary Louise Culpepper is Senior Admissions Adviser at the Blavatnik School of Government. Find out more about how to apply to the Master of Public Policy .

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What is the Purpose of School Policies?

Schools and other education settings are complex learning communities, involving many different roles and functions. In order for schools to be safe, supportive environments where students can learn and thrive, there needs to be clear procedures, structures, and expectations in place. Policies are a formal way of documenting the procedures and values of a school. In this article, we will look at the function of school policies, which policies schools should have in place, including statutory school policies, and provide general guidance surrounding writing effective policies. 

Why Do Schools Have Policies and Procedures?

Policies and procedures cover all aspects of school life. They can be written for a variety of audiences, depending on the subject, including students, parents, staff, and governors. Policies ensure that values are applied consistently, define clear expectations, and help provide a framework for employees and students alike. Staff are responsible for familiarising themselves with the school’s policies, and for following the procedures contained within them. 

Key general purposes of school policies include to:

• Create a safe and productive environment for pupils and staff.
• Communicate your schools’ core values and principles clearly to staff, parents, governors, and other bodies (including Ofsted).
• Help staff carry out their duties effectively.
• Help to attract prospective parents, pupils, staff, and governors to your setting.
• Ensure the smooth running of the school – define the school’s rules, regulations, and procedures.
• Ensure a consistent approach in key areas of school life, for example, behaviour.

Types of School Policy

Broadly speaking, school policies come under the following categories:

• Statutory policies. Schools and academies are required by law to have these policies and documents in place.
• Discretionary policies. These are additional policies a school or setting might wish to have in place but are not required by law.
• Curriculum policies. These relate to specific areas of the curriculum. Most of these will be discretionary but some are statutory, such as a relationships and sex education policy.

What Are Statutory Policies?

Certain policies and documents are required to be in place by law. These usually cover major strategic areas, and the specific requirements differ according to the type of educational setting. The Department for Education keeps updated lists of statutory policies for schools and academies. 

List of statutory school policies

Click on the drop downs below to see which statutory policies are required in each area. For each policy, we have included the following information:

• Which types of settings they apply to.
• How often they should be reviewed.
• Who needs to approve and review the policy or document.
• Links to further statutory guidance.

Admission Arrangements Policies and Documents

Admissions policy.

Applies to:

• Local-authority-maintained schools, including maintained special schools and maintained nursery schools.
• Free schools, including university technical colleges and studio schools.
• Voluntary-aided schools and foundation schools directly.
• Community and voluntary-controlled schools – if the local authority formally delegates the responsibility.

Review: The arrangements must be determined annually. Government guidance requires the setting to consult on any changes. Where no changes are made, consultation is required at least every seven years.

Approval:   The full governing body or a committee of the governing body must approve, where the school is its own admissions authority.

Further guidance:

• School Admissions Code  (statutory)
• School Admissions Appeal Code  (statutory)
• Summer Born Children School Admissions  (non-statutory)

Administration and Data Policies and Documents

Charging and remissions.

This applies directly to academies and free schools via their funding agreements. 

Review: Governing bodies can decide how often to review this policy but the DfE recommends an annual review.

Approval:   The governing body can delegate approval to a committee of the governing body, an individual governor, or the headteacher.

• Charging for School Activities  (non-statutory)

Data Protection

• Independent schools, not state-funded.
• Sixth-form colleges.
• Further education colleges with 16 to 19 provision.
• Pupil referral units (PRUs).
• Non-maintained special schools.
• Non-maintained nursery schools.

Under the Data Protection (Charges and Information) Regulations 2018, schools must register with the  Information Commissioner’s Office .

You must adhere to GDPR requirements. 

Review/Approval: Annual registration with the information commissioner’s office is required.

The DfE advises that governing bodies, an individual governor, or headteacher review this requirement annually. 

Protection of biometric information of children in schools and colleges

• Academies including 16 to 19 academies.
• Further education institutions.

Review: The DfE recommends an annual review.

• Protection of Biometric Information of Children in Schools and Colleges  (non-statutory)

Register of pupils’ admission to school and attendance

• Non-maintained nursery schools

Review/Approval: This must be a live document. The governing body can delegate approval to a committee of the governing body, an individual governor, or the headteacher. The register itself can be kept by appropriate school staff.

• School Attendance  (non-statutory) (non-statutory)

School information published on a website

• Local-authority-maintained schools, including maintained special schools.

Review: This must be a live document that must be updated as soon as possible after a change, and at least annually. 

Approval: The governing body can delegate approval to a committee of the governing body, an individual governor, or the headteacher. 

Further guidance: Details of the information to include on websites:

• What Local-authority-maintained Schools Must Publish Online
• What Academies, Free Schools and Colleges Should Publish Online

School complaints

The DfE also strongly advises academies to consider following the guidance.

Academies should have a written complaints procedure, which is available on request to parents. The DfE recommends that academies publish this online and make it available to anyone who requests it.

Review: Governing bodies can decide how often to review this policy but the DfE recommends an annual review. 

Approval:  The governing body or the proprietor can delegate approval to a committee of the governing body, an individual governor, or the headteacher.

Further guidance: 

• School Complaints Procedures  (non-statutory)
• Setting Up an Academies Complaints Procedure  (non-statutory)

Staffing and Human Resources Policies and Documents

Capability of staff.

• Free schools.

Review: The DfE recommends that governing bodies review this annually. 

Approval:  The governing body of a local-authority-maintained school or management committee can delegate approval to a committee of the governing body or an individual governor. Academies can set their own terms for approval.

• Teacher Appraisal and Capability Model Policy  (non-statutory)
• Staffing and Employment: Advice for Schools  (non-statutory)

Early Career Teachers (ECTs)

Approval:  The governing body must ensure that the school is compliant.

• Induction for Early Career Teachers (ECTs)  (statutory)

Staff Discipline, Conduct and Grievance (Procedures for Addressing)

Review: For local-authority-maintained schools, the governing body is free to decide how often you review. The DfE recommends that governing bodies review this annually. All other establishments may want to include this policy but should refer to general employment law.

Approval:  For local-authority-maintained schools – the governing body must not delegate responsibility for establishing their staff discipline, conduct, or grievance procedures.

For academies – the governing body is free to delegate approval to a committee of the governing body, an individual governor, or the headteacher.

• Staffing and Employment Advice for Schools  (non-statutory)

Single Central Record of Recruitment and Vetting Checks

This applies to all schools, colleges and further education institutions where early years education is delivered. They are linked to safeguarding policies.

Review:  This is a live document covering staff currently appointed. Schools should also maintain a single central record of pre-employment checks.

Approval: The governing body of a local-authority-maintained school or a management committee of a PRU is generally free to delegate approval to:

• The headteacher.
• One or more governors/members.
• A committee of the governing body/management committee.
• One or more governors/members acting with the headteacher.
• Keeping Children Safe in Education  (statutory)
• Disqualification Under the Childcare Act 2006  (statutory)

Statement of Procedures for Dealing with Allegations of Abuse Against Staff

Teachers’ Pay

Academies and free schools have greater freedoms than maintained schools.

Schools must follow the statutory guidance when making pay award decisions and creating their pay policies.

Review: This must be reviewed annually.

Approval:  The governing body or the local authority will need to approve.

• Teachers’ Pay and Conditions  (statutory)

Pupil Wellbeing and Safeguarding Policies

Accessibility plan.

Review: This should be reviewed every three years.

• Equality Act 2010 Advice for Schools  (non-statutory)

Child Protection Policy and Procedures

Review: This should be reviewed and updated annually as a minimum.

Approval:  The governing body or the proprietor must approve.

The policy should be available publicly on the school or college website, or elsewhere.

Our Hub article,  Creating A Safeguarding Policy , contains a useful template.

Child With Health Needs Who Cannot Attend School

• Where a child is not on the roll of a school.

Review: The DfE recommends that governing bodies review this requirement annually.

Approval:  The governing body must approve.

• Education for Children with Health Needs Who Cannot Attend School  (statutory)

Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Those delivering the EYFS are required to have policies and procedures on a range of issues covering safeguarding and welfare.

Schools are not required to have separate policies to cover EYFS requirements where they are already met through an existing policy.

An EYFS profile assessment is required for each child during the academic year they reach the age of 5 (for most children this is the reception year in primary school).

Nursery settings catering for children under the age of three must complete a summary check when a child is aged two.

Review: Review frequency varies. Further details are available in the statutory guidance.

Approval: The governing body can determine approval. 

• Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage  (statutory)

Special Educational Needs and Disability

Review: The SEN information report should be updated annually, and if any changes to the information occur during the year, these should be updated as soon as possible.

Approval: The full governing body or proprietor must approve. 

• SEND Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years  (statutory)

Supporting Pupils with Medical Conditions

• Academies, excluding 16 to 19 academies.

Review: The governing body, proprietor, and management committee can decide how often this is reviewed. However, it should be regularly reviewed and readily accessible to parents and school staff.

• Local-authority-maintained schools – the governing body can approve.
• Academies – proprietors can approve.
• PRUs – the management committee can approve.
• Supporting Pupils at School with Medical Conditions  (statutory)

Relationships Education (Primary) and Relationships and Sex Education (Secondary) Policies

Relationships education (primary) and relationships and sex education (secondary).

• Non-maintained Special Schools.

Review: The governing body can decide how often this is reviewed. The DfE advises that this is reviewed annually.

Approval: The governing body or the proprietor can delegate approval to a committee of the governing body, an individual governor, or the headteacher.

• Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE), and Health Education  (statutory)

Behaviour Policies and Documents

Behaviour in schools.

Review: The headteacher can decide how often this is reviewed. The DfE advises that this is reviewed annually.

Approval: The headteacher can delegate approval for this.

• Behaviour and Discipline in Schools: Guide for Governing Bodies  (statutory)

You may also find our Hub article,  Creating A School Behaviour Management Policy , useful.

Behaviour Principles Written Statement

Academies and free schools have greater freedoms than maintained schools. 

Independent schools must ensure:

• A written behaviour policy is drawn up that sets out the sanctions to be adopted in the event of pupil misbehaviour.
• The policy is implemented effectively.
• A record is kept of the sanctions imposed upon pupils for serious misbehaviour.

Approval: The full governing body or a committee of the governing body must approve this.

School Exclusion

Review: The DfE advises that this is reviewed annually.

• School Exclusion  (statutory)

Facilities Policies and Documents

• Local authorities on behalf of community and voluntary-controlled schools.

Review: The governing body, proprietor, or local authority is free to decide how often it is reviewed. The DfE advises that governing bodies review this requirement annually.

Approval: The employer can determine how to implement and approve.

• Health and Safety Advice for Schools  (non-statutory)

First Aid in Schools

Review: The DfE advises that governing bodies review this requirement annually.

• First Aid in Schools  (non-statutory)

Premises Management Documents

There are many aspects of school premises that require safe management and maintenance such as asbestos, fire safety, and statutory testing. Those with duties for maintaining school buildings should make sure that the policies, procedures, and the condition of the estate are compliant with appropriate legislation, including health and safety.

Independent schools, academies, and free schools have sole responsibility.

For local-authority-maintained schools, both local authorities and schools have responsibilities for the repair and maintenance of premises.

Approval: The governing body can delegate approval to a committee of the governing body, an individual governor, or the headteacher.

• Good Estate Management for Schools  (non-statutory)
• Asbestos Management in Schools  (non-statutory)
• Fire Safety Risk Assessment for Educational Premises  (non-statutory)
• Standards for School Premises  (non-statutory)
• Emergency and Risk Management  (non-statutory)

Governance Policies and Documents

Equality information and objectives (public sector equality duty) statement for publication.

• Pupil referral units (PRU).
• Local authorities on behalf of PRUs.

Review: Under specific duties, governing bodies, local authorities, and proprietors are required to draw up and publish equality objectives every four years and publish information annually. They need to demonstrate how they are meeting the aims of the general public sector equality duty.

Governors’ Allowances (Schemes for Paying)

Academies and free schools have greater freedoms than maintained schools. Although this requirement is not mandatory for academies, the DfE strongly advises academies to consider following the guidance.

Review: For local-authority-maintained schools with a delegated budget, the governing body is free to decide how often schemes for paying governors’ allowances are reviewed. The DfE advises that this is reviewed annually.

(Where schools do not have a delegated budget, the local authority may pay allowances and expenses at a rate determined by them.)

Approval:  The governing body can delegate approval to a committee of the governing body, an individual governor, or the headteacher.

Instrument of Government

• Governance Handbook  (non-statutory)
• Constitution of Governing Bodies of Maintained Schools  (statutory)

Register of Business Interests of Headteachers and Governors

Review: This is a live document that should be updated as soon as possible after a change.

Approval: The governing body can delegate approval subject to the local authority scheme.

• Schemes for Financing Schools  (statutory)
• Constitution of Governing Bodies of Local-authority-maintained Schools  (statutory)

Careers Guidance Policies and Documents

Careers guidance.

• Local-authority-maintained schools.
• Voluntary-aided schools and foundation schools.
• Community and voluntary-controlled schools.

Schools must publish details of their careers programme for young people and their parents. They must also publish a statement setting out their arrangements for provider access.

Review: The DfE advises that governing bodies review these annually.

• Careers Guidance and Access for Education and Training Providers  (statutory)

Sample of School Policies – Discretionary

In addition to the statutory policies, school leaders will want to produce a variety of discretionary policies to cover other areas of school life, including key curriculum areas. 

The full list would depend on the setting, but some common ones include:

• Acceptable Use Policy
• Anti-bullying Policy
• Calculation Policy
• Curriculum Policy
• Educational Visits Policy
• Finance Policy
• Image Use Policy
• Legionella Policy
• Lockdown Policy
• Mobile Phone and Devices Policy
• Online Safety Policy
• Remote Learning Policy
• Risk Management Policy
• Safer Recruitment Policy
• Staff Expenses Policy
• Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Policy

The following Hub articles contain guidance regarding additional  policies:

• What Should a School Allergy Policy Cover?
• How to Write a School Mental Health Policy
• How to Develop a School Bereavement Policy: Free Template
• Child Protection Photography Policy: Free Consent Form Template
• Creating a Safeguarding Policy – Example Template for Schools

Writing School Policies

Policies should be clear, informative, and concise. When writing any policy, you should 

take your audience into account. Ensure that you do not use jargon and remove any ambiguous statements which could be misinterpreted. 

You need to consider how to make your policies accessible. Depending on your setting, this might include providing translated materials, providing paper copies for those without internet or printer access, or making sure you follow good practice with regards to making communications dyslexia friendly, for example.

The actual writing of policies can be delegated to any member of staff – with approval being given in line with the specific requirements for each policy. For example, curriculum policies are often written by those responsible for that area of the curriculum.

For some policies there is a legal requirement for them to be published on the school website, however many schools decide to share all their policies online. This enables parents, and other individuals, such as prospective employees, to easily access the information. Bear in mind that you will need to offer written copies if requested.

A setting may wish to organise policies into handbooks or group policies together (for example PSHE and British Values often sit well together). Separate handbooks can be created for staff, students, parents, etc, each containing the relevant policies and documents.

Reviewing Policies

Some statutory policies have specified review periods, as detailed in the drop downs above, whilst others are reviewed at the discretion of the leadership team. It is good practice to review all policies regularly . Each policy should state when that version was written and the date of the next pending review.

Reviewing policies ensures that the information remains up to date and in line with current legislation. For example, all relevant safeguarding policies should reflect regular changes in key guidance, such as Keeping Children Safe in Education ( our Hub article is updated with key amendments as they are published).

Policies should be accessible, accurate records of a setting’s procedures, values, and expectations. These documents help all members of the school community to work together to create a safe and enriching learning and working environment for all. 

Further Resources:

• Safer Recruitment in Education Course 
• How to Choose A School: The Different Types of School
• Safeguarding Children Guidance
• Health and Safety in Schools: Free Checklist
• Creating a School Behaviour Management Policy
• Conflict in the Classroom: Coaching Children in Acting Responsibly
• School Trip Risk Assessment Template for Teachers

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Her favourite article is Why is Child Development So Important in Early Years?

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Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Why Do School Reforms Occur Again and Again?

• School Reform and Restructuring
• Standards-Based Reform

School reforms unfold less like an auto engine piston pumping up and down within a cylinder and more like a large weather front of uncertain origin moving across a region. Reforms, like weather fronts varying by seasons but similar across years, go through phases that become familiar if observers note historical patterns and, in our speeded-up, multi-tasking culture, record what occurs. And most important, school reforms, like weather fronts, recur.

As a historian of schooling, I have noted phases of school reform in the U.S. over the past century that policymakers and practitioners have experienced. While I offer these stages in sequential order, keep in mind that the pace of each phase varies according to the nature of the proposed reform, when it occurs, how much reform talk permeates popular and professional media, which political coalitions push the reforms, and, of crucial importance, widespread acceptance of the reforms by those charged to implement them.

Keep in mind, however, that pandemics, wars, political upheavals, and social movements disrupt the sequence. Moreover, there are over 13,000 school districts in the nation (California has about 1,000). Finally, unlike France, Italy, Spain, China, and Russia, there is no national ministry of education that funds these districts or issues mandates for educators to follow. The point is that in such a decentralized system of schooling, these phases do not mechanically unfold in step-wise progression across the country. Rather they occur in the quasi-random fashion akin to a children’s game of tag.

Given these cautions, here is what I have observed about the origin and spread of school reforms that recur time and again over the past century.

* Social, political, economic, and demographic changes create situations that opinion-elites define as problems . By the 1890s through World War II, the U.S.’s economy grew dramatically and demands for skilled (not unskilled workers) grew. Employers wanted high school graduates who were literate and had skills that could be applied to surging new industries. Or consider that in the the 1970s, Japanese and German products seized large sectors of domestic markets requiring American industry and businesses to restructure their operations to compete internationally.

After World War II, waves of immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Latin America have made the U.S. a culturally diverse nation. The Immigration and Nationality Act (1965) shifted policy from a quota system on different nationalities favoring western Europe to a focus on reuniting families and welcoming skilled immigrants. By the 2020 census, the U.S. had become no longer a largely  white  nation but a multi-racial democracy.

* Policymakers, academics, and opinion-makers such as corporate officials, civic leaders, and foundation presidents talk to one another and the media about these problems . Over time, these demographic and socio-economic changes fueled political opinion elites to find ways that American institutions might politically remedy these emerging problems. National commissions issue reports and a consensus–what  David Tyack  and I have called “policy talk”–begins to grow about what the  real  problems are and which solutions are politically feasible.

Here is where elites frame the problem and very often point to improving schools as a solution (e.g.,  The Nation at Risk , 1983). This process historically is what David Labaree has called “ educationalizing ” national problems (e.g., childhood obesity, racial segregation, poverty).

* Groups and individuals (elite entrepreneurs, political officials, foundation leaders, special interest groups, community organizations, unions, etc.) develop policy proposals and school programs to solve the problem (e.g.,common curriculum standards, more tests and accountability regulations) . Through various mechanisms (e.g., state and federal legislation, district school board decisions, foundation-funded programs), groups and individuals such as corporate leaders, philanthropists, governors, and mayors come to be known as school reformers. State and local school officials, spurred often by media attention, push particular policies that become known as “reforms” (e.g., new reading and math programs, charter schools, small high schools, 1:1 laptops).

* Some of these policies get adopted.  Laws (e.g., the federal No Child Left Behind Act), district school board decisions (e.g., four-day school week, performance pay and anti-obesity programs), foundation-funded projects (e.g., technology integration across academic subjects) become the new wallpaper of reform. Superintendents, principals, and teachers attempt to incorporate these new policies, programs and innovations into routine practice in districts, schools, and classrooms.

* Growing criticism of educators’ seemingly slow, halfhearted efforts or resistance to put reforms into practice appears.  Unexpected outcomes occur (e.g., testing and accountability rules produce narrowed curriculum and teaching to the test; funding for new programs lags and budgets shrink). Reform promoters’ enthusiasm gives way to disappointment, annoyance, and even anger toward educators (e.g., uptick in overt hostility to teachers and their unions, higher turnover among superintendents and principals). Schools and teachers come under attack.

* And then different social, political, economic, and demographic changes create situations that opinion-elites define as problems….  And it is here that another cycle begins.

For readers over the age of 50 who have worked in schools for at least two decades or observed them as students and later as parents may find these phases familiar. If they do, they may also note that these cycles have within them certain commonalities:

*Policy elites mobilize individuals and groups to take action by framing problems, picking solutions, and getting policies adopted;

*Putting policy into practice is utterly dependent upon superintendents, principals, and teachers who played little to no role in framing problems or selecting solutions;

*Most policies, particularly those targeting changes in how teachers teach, are implemented partially and occasionally produce unanticipated consequences in classrooms.

In my opinion, we remain within another cycle of standards-based reforms dating back to  A Nation at Risk  report (1983). Since then a cascade of reform-driven policies slowly rolled out in familiar phases over the nation’s public schools including a Common Core curriculum, expanded parental choice of schools through charter schools, increased testing and accountability protocols. Even after the Covid-19 school closures, the slow growth of remote instruction has become another tool in maintaining standards-based reforms of the past four decades.

Perhaps readers may see these phases of school reform and commonalities differently. Let me know, if you do.

This blog post has been shared by permission from the author. Readers wishing to comment on the content are encouraged to do so via the link to the original post. Find the original post here:

The views expressed by the blogger are not necessarily those of NEPC.

Larry Cuban

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Importance Of School Rules (Essay Sample) 2023

Table of Contents

Importance Of School Rules

Introduction.

Remember when, as a child, you were always reminded about the importance of school rules and regulations? Your parents and teacher probably repeatedly told you that obeying school rules is ultimately for your own good.

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In this essay, I talk about the advantages of school rules and why are school rules important. Rule-following sometimes gets bad flak, but I want to offer a fresh perspective on the overall importance of school policies.

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Importance of school rules and regulations essay

Following rules formally begins when a child starts class. The humble classroom is a place where kids first encounter the need to follow rules outside the home. 

Rules are there for a reason: they are guidelines that enable a student to be disciplined and have good decorum. There are rules that discuss how to conduct oneself among peers, while other mandates talk more about the technicalities and schedules a student must follow.

This essay aims to explore in-depth the significance of having academic policies and how they benefit the students.

Creating focus, empowering education

Firstly, having academic regulations is important because it creates healthy and safe boundaries for students to focus on their studies. It gives them the best chance to excel in their classes.

The same focus also creates a strong awareness of what is allowed and what is not. Just as regulations spell out how students are expected to behave, they also clarify the consequences of misbehaving. This serves as a preventive measure for bad conduct, as students are made aware early on what they should not be doing. When explained properly, rules will be understood by students as guidelines created for their overall safety and well-being.

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Establishing the school’s academic reputation

Academic regulations do not only benefit the students themselves. As more students happily adhere to policies, the school’s reputation gets a boost.

It must be said that parents are the ultimate decision-makers when it comes to their children’s schooling. Many of these discerning parents do not just consider geographic location when it comes to selecting their kids’ future schools. They take a long, thoughtful look at the school’s track record; whether or not it is known for producing people of good character. It is the graduates of the academy who serve as the most effective testimonials for the academy.

Holds a safe space for character formation

Regulations also exist to help a student get back on his feet after breaking an ordinance. In situations where a rule is disobeyed, academies also have protocols in place to help a student learn from his mistakes and become better.

Whether disciplinary action refers to suspension or community service, it is meant to empower students to recognize mistakes when they are made and resolve to do things differently next time.

Preparation for a future with more rules

People will always encounter policies, in and out of classrooms. We are all accountable to someone. As such, rule-following in class is a solid foundation for dealing with larger and stricter regulations as one gets older, graduates, and enters the workforce.

It also teaches students to respect authorities and maintain good relationships with them. Respect is an important trait to master in class, as being respectful can take you to places that will put you on the road to success.

If respect is not learned in class through rule-following, a student may either face the consequence of not being allowed to graduate; or struggle with compliance in real-life. If you think about it, their future jobs and families are at stake. The community they live in will also be affected, as these are places where respect is a currency.

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Some might say that rules and regulations are stifling and suffocating. They might think that they limit one’s freedom to enjoy life.

In this case, a change in perspective is needed. Fences are not meant to keep us in, but to provide a clear safe space for us to truly thrive. This is essentially what rules are meant to do. Boundaries are a healthy way for us to grow, learn, unlearn, and relearn.

At the end of the day, while rule-setting may get the ire and criticism of some, they ultimately serve the greater good. Regulations are not meant to keep students from having fun while learning. On the contrary, they are there to protect the culture and atmosphere where learning is meant to happen.

I implore every parent to also train their children to appreciate rules, even before they enter school. A lot of the foundational training on compliance should really start at home. Give your child every chance to succeed in the real world.

Short Essay About School Rules And Regulations

Implementing school rules stirs up both positive and skeptical conversations among people. They wonder if it really is effective in promoting good behavior. I firmly believe that adhering to policies cultivates not only academic values but also moral values.

Students tend to think that policy-following is like their school raining on their parade, that it is a way to simply get them under control. I think that academic policies and regulations actually create a comfortable environment where they can thrive. They help learners can feel safe and enjoy the curriculum their teacher has mapped out for them.

Academic rules do not only pertain to dress code or class schedule; they also outline disciplinary actions that serve as consequences to rule-breaking. Such actions exist for the better welfare of all students, whether policy-breaker or policy-follower. It provides an avenue for support for a student who may be experiencing peer pressure or low self-esteem; or a way to repair the consequences of one’s mistakes. Educators also benefit as they can maximize their class time without any disruptions. The main reason why these classroom rules exist is to empower students to take responsibility for their actions.

What To Include In An Essay About Rules And Regulations In School

If you are crafting a general piece about academic policies and regulations, it’s important to identify the angle you want to approach it from. Do you want to focus on the state of school policies today? Do you want to feature a specific school’s new rules and evaluate them? Do you want to do broad strokes on the importance of school policies? Finding your angle is important because without it, you may end up with an extra-long essay that reflects directionless thoughts.

10 Reasons Why Rules Are Important In School

What are 10 reasons why classroom policies are crucial to the success of the student, educator, and academe?

• They set healthy boundaries for all the members of the school to thrive in.
• They protect student-educator relationships inside and outside school.
• They provide helpful guidelines for learners on how to properly conduct themselves around others.
• They teach students the value and importance of respecting authorities, not just in school but in all aspects of society that they will eventually be part of.
• They provide a safe environment for healthy friendships to form.
• They prevent students from inflicting unnecessary harm to another.
• They add to the school’s good image, thanks to the quality of graduates it produces.
• They promote good behavior among classmates.
• They allow students to have ownership over their own decisions, including any consequences resulting from their actions.