Chapter 6The Major Education Policy Actors

Focus Questions•Who are the major participants in the policy process at the state level?

•Which ones wield the most influence?

•How can education leaders identify the major players in their own states and obtain information about them?

•How can education leaders follow stat level education policy making?

The Dramatis Personae Of The Policy Drama• Before exploring the policy process itself, identifying

those who are actively involved in it is important. In policy discourse, these individuals and groups are called policy actors.

• Collectively, they comprise the dramatis personae, or cast of characters, who play major and minor roles in the ongoing drama of policy development, adoption, and implementation.

• Although policy actors exist at the federal , state, and local levels, this chapter emphasizes state level actors.

Table 6.1 Ranking of Education Policy Actors’ Influence in Six States

Rank Policy Actor Mean Score 1 Individual legislators 5.85 2 Legislature as a whole 5.73 3 Chief state school officer 5.21 4 Education interest groups combined 5.14 5 Teachers’ organizations 5.10 6 Governor and executive staff 4.88 7 Legislative staff 4.66 8 State board of education 4.51 9 School boards’ association 4.18 10 Administrators’ association 4.00 11 Courts 3.92 12 Federal government 3.89 13 Noneducator groups 3.87 14 Lay groups 3.10 15 Education research organizations 2.66

• As part of their project, they asked 135 state policy actors to assign each of 15 individuals or groups a score from one (lowest) to seven (highest), reflecting their importance to education policy in their own state.

• The most influential education groups at the state level.

• Teachers’ unions• State departments of education • School boards’ associations• Administrators’ associations• Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)

Government ActorsThe Legislative Branch

• The legislature: Function and Structure. Fifty-one legislatures exist in the United States: the U.S. Congress and the 50 state legislatures.

• All of them bear a strong resemblance to each other because they exercise similar functions and are organized in similar ways.

• A major function of every legislature is, of course, the development and passage of statutes, one type of law.

• However, legislatures play other roles as well. For example, before developing bills, legislatures often hold hearings where experts provide testimony on public issue.

• They may also establish a special committee to oversee the implementation of a new piece of legislation.

• Finally, legislatures sometimes exercise an investigatory function.

• The U.S. Congress and 49 of the state legislatures are bicameral; they have two chambers or houses. The single exception is Nebraska, which has a unicameral legislature that, unlike the other legislatures, is nonpartisan.

• In all the bicameral bodies, the smaller chamber is called the Senate. Senates tend to be rather sedate, in part because senators usually serve relatively long terms and can afford to move slowly.

• The most common name for the larger chamber of a legislature is House of Representatives; other names used include Assembly, General Assembly, and House of Delegates. In contrast to senate, house members serve two-year terms, they are always running for reelection.

• Both senates and houses have officers. The most important officer in a state senate is usually called the President; in 28 states the lieutenant governor serves as the president of the senate by virtue of his office.

• In the other states, the president is a senator who is either elected by the senate or appointed by another official and then confirmed by the senate.

• The top officer in the house is the Speaker. Speakers are elected by the members of the house in an election which is often fierce and filled with conflict because the Speaker wields great power.

• Usually the Speaker is a veteran leader of the party that holds a majority of the seats in the house.

• Other important legislative officers include the majority leader, minority leader, and whip in each chamber.

• Both Congress and state legislatures have numerous committees that accomplish most of the actual work of the legislature.

• Each chamber has a committee to handle proposed legislation in each specific policy domain.

• Typical committees in a state legislature deal with areas such as highways, prisons, welfare, education, and the justice system.

• Each chamber also has a committee that determines the level at which new laws will be funded; this committee may be called the Ways and Means Committee, Appropriations Committee, Finance Committee, or something similar.

• The legislative leaders control committee appointments; each party has appointees on every committee, but the majority party usually holds the majority of the votes on all of them.

• Finally, in most state legislatures each political party has a caucus, which consists of all the legislators affiliated with the party, regardless of the chamber in which they serve.

• The caucuses are important because they develop the policy agenda that the party pursues in the legislature.

• Although some caucuses are led by chairpersons who play no other major role in the legislature, in others one of the legislative officers also chairs the party caucus.

Legislative Staff.• State senators and representatives are relatively

visible: their names and pictures appear in newspapers and they make frequent public appearances. Much less visible- but almost as important in the policy process-are the men and women who staff their offices.

• In fact, throughout most of U.S. history, state legislatures have been amateurish bodies dominated by a group of each state’s leading “good ole boys”, who were better known for living it up during their brief visits to the state capital than for effective governing.

• Because state legislatures lacked the resources necessary to function well in the modern world, nothing more could be expected of them.

• For example, as recently as the early 1960s, the only staff serving the 240 members of the Massachusetts House were five typists working in a secretarial pool.

• Because the representatives did not have offices in the state capital, they were forced to conduct official business wherever they could find an empty spot- perhaps on a couch in the lobby or in a cafeteria across the street from the capital.

• Their mail and other messages were placed in a set of pigeonholes similar to those found in some college dormitories. Massachusetts was not unusual; this was the norm across the country.

• Today, most state legislatures have modern office buildings and staffs. As a result of these occurrences, state legislatures have become more professionalized.

• Increasingly, state level lawmakers receive fair compensation for performing their legislative tasks, work full-time at their legislative jobs, and receive the resources needed to hire competent staffs.

• However, state legislatures differ considerably in the extent of their professionalization.

• Table 6.2 divides the states into three groups based on their legislature’s degree of professionalization.

• The criteria used to determine the degree of professionalization are (1)the number of full-time legislators, (2) the salaries paid to legislators, and (3) the size of the legislative staff.

Table 6.2 The Degree of Professionalization of the State Legislatures Highly Partially Largely

Professionalized Professionalized Unprofessionalized California Alabama Arkansas

Illinois Alaska Georgia Massachusetts Arizona IdahoMichigan Colorado Indiana New Jersey Connecticut Maine

New York Delaware Montana Ohio Florida Nevada

Pennsylvania Hawaii New Hampshire Wisconsin Iowa New Mexico Kansas North Dakota Kentucky Rhode Island Louisiana South Dakota

Maryland Utah Minnesota Vermont

Mississippi West Virginia Missouri Wyoming

Nebraska North Carolina Oklahoma

Oregon South Carolina

Tennessee Texas

Virginia Washington

• State legislators normally use three types of staff members. Clerical staff perform the tasks involved in running any office: answering telephones, word processing letters and other documents, preparing mailings, and maintaining calendars.

• Although sometimes these workers are young and poorly paid, a legislator’s clerical staff often wields considerable power.

• In particular, they control access to the legislator or to her professional staff members.

• The latter are, as their name suggests, people with professional expertise who help with the substantive aspects of legislative work. Usually they have college degrees in fields such as political science, sociology, or law.

• They perform tasks such as screening and filtering the volumes of printed material that reach a legislative office and summarizing its important elements for the lawmaker.

• They also do much of the routine casework with constituents, such as writing letters and making phone calls to help a mayor from the district obtain a grant to repair a bridge, or meeting with a citizens’ group that opposes the construction of a new prison in their community.

• In addition, professional staff members review and analyze budgets for busy legislators and prepare succinct reports on major issues for them.

• Education leaders should not underestimate the power and influence of the professional legislative staff.

• “Legislative staffs have a major effect on policy making because of their proximity to the legislators and the centers of legislative power and because of their key role in processing and providing the information legislators require”.

• Finally, in addition to the clerical and professional staff members who work in their own office, lawmakers usually have access to a centralized staff agency that provides services for the entire legislature.

• Often called a legislative reference service or a legislative research bureau, this agency performs specialized work such as drafting sample bills, researching legal questions, and providing the background of previous attempts to pass a law.

• Although staff workers in these agencies are even less visible than office staff, they too are in a position to exercise considerable influence on the policy process.

• Important Legislative Actors. The individual legislators are more influential .

• In fact, they emerged as the most important actors in the process overall.

• Usually the most influential individual legislators are members of an education committee, with the committee chair likely to be especially important.

• Every state legislature has at least one education committee. Four states-Nebraska, Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts-have only one.

• Thirty states have two education committees- one in the House and one in the Senate.

• Sixteen states have three or four education committees; the third and fourth committees are either joint committees (including both Senate and House members) or special committees for higher education.

• Regardless of the number of committees or their names, the members of those committees have great influence on state education policy because education committees exercise several important functions.

• These include developing education laws, reviewing existing legislation, and holding hearings on education policy issues.

The Executive Branch• Governors. Although Marshall et al.(1989) found

that governors have considerably less influence on education policy than the legislature, their influence is nonetheless substantial.

• Activist governors who place education high on their policy agendas can have a great impact not only within their own states but also nationally.

• Prominent examples in the last 15 years include former Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas and former Governor George W. Bush of Texas.

• The power of the governor’s office varies considerably among states. Although as a general rule the strongest governors are found in the Northeast and the weakest in the South, notable exceptions exist.

• A governor’s power is a function of several factors. The first of these is institutional power- the authority granted the governor by the state constitution and other state laws.

• The strongest governors are elected to serve a four-year term and can be reelected at least once, have the power to appoint numerous state officials, have considerable control over the state budget, and can veto legislation of which they disapprove.

• Several other factors can enhance gubernatorial power. A governor elected by a landslide or by a comfortable majority is more powerful than one who just barely won an election or succeeded to office because of a death or a resignation.

• Governors with much previous experience in state government have an advantage over those who are new to state politics.

• A governor who belongs to the most powerful political party in the state has an advantage over a governor from a minority party.

• Finally, a governor with an appealing personal style and strong presence is more powerful than one who is drab and lackluster.

• Increasingly, education policy is one of governors’ favorite issue areas. In part, this interest results from the activities of the National Governors’ Association (NGA).

• Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it had 94 staff members in 2002 and operated research, lobbying, and state service branches.

• The first of its research studies focused on public education.

• As an example, in 2002 the Center was providing help to states as they implemented the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

• The NGA provides an important forum where governors can discuss education and exchange ideas about possible policy initiatives.

• It also serves as a clearinghouse for governors and their staffs, providing information about policy in various states.

• The importance of the NGA’s influence on governors’ education reform agendas is well documented.

• State Boards of Education. Although State Boards of Education (SBEs) exercise both quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions, they also have an important administrative role and are appointed by the governor in two thirds of the state.

• Therefore, they have been included in the executive branch.

• Within a legal framework developed by the legislature, SBEs make education policy in areas other than school finance.

• Their most important policy tasks include (1) either developing, approving, or developing and approving the rules and regulations used in implementing education laws enacted by the legislature; (2) developing certification requirements for K-12 teachers and administrators;

• (3) approving and monitoring educational assessment programs, including state tests; (4) deciding on minimum high-school graduation requirements; and (5) determining accreditation standards.

• In addition, SBEs often serve as the final step in the appeals process for administrative redress cases that have arisen in K-12 school systems.

• Chief State School Officers. Since 1900, all U.S. states have had a chief state school officer (CSSO), a public official charged with the supervision of public education.

• The CSSO is often called the superintendent of public instruction, the state superintendent of schools, or the commissioner of education.

• Most CSSOs are professional educators with several years of administrative experience. CSSOs are appointed in 35 of the states-most often by the SBE-but in nine states they are appointed by the governor.

• In the other 15 states, the CSSO is popularly elected. The method used for selecting the CSSO reveals a lot about a state’s education policy system. CSSOs appointed by the governor are more likely than others to accept the governor’s policy agenda and work to advance it.

• Although they usually have a good working relationship with the governor and his office, they may or may not work effectively with the legislature and usually hesitate to resist the governor or take independent initiatives.

• On the other hand, a CSSO appointed by an SBE will probably act independently and may even challenge or resist the governor or the legislature on occasion.

• Most independent are the few CSSO who are still popularly elected.

• However, because they have no built-in connection to any other individual or governing body, they may be so isolated in state capital that they can accomplish little.

• The SDE is a state bureaucracy headed by the CSSO and headquartered in the state capital, often right downtown near all the legislative and other offices.

• Although many SDE employees are professional educators, others are not; people with training in fields such as finance, accounting, political science, and economics are often employed by SDEs.

The Judicial Branch• Just as the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower federal

courts play an important policy making role, so do the 50 state court systems.

• Two types of state court systems exist: two-tiered systems and three-tiered systems.

• The eleven states with two-tiered systems-trial courts and a supreme court-are either sparsely populated or small in area.

• The systems of the other 39 states include an intermediate appellate court that hands down the final decision in most cases, thereby lightening the supreme court’s workload.

• Ultimately, judges interpret the statutes enacted by legislatures and can overturn them. Assuming that judges are somehow isolated from the broader policy process and therefore “above” it is a serious mistake.

• Both groups and individuals agendas often seek to influence the courts.

• One way to do so is to quietly support the election or appointment of judges favorable to one’s cause.

• Another way is to pay the legal expenses of plaintiffs whose cases are relevant to a specific policy issue.

• For example, at the federal level the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) financially supported the parents who brought suit against the Topeka Board of Education in the 1950s, ultimately leading to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed racial segregation in schools. Similar support is frequently provided at the state level, too.

• In addition, interested groups can file amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs presenting their position on a key case.

• These briefs then become part of the official record. In short, the courts are an important policy arena.

• Since the 1970s, state courts have played a major role in shaping school finance policy by either upholding or overturning those school finance systems that have been challenged by dissatisfied plaintiffs.

• Often the plaintiffs in these cases have been school administrators in districts with financial troubles-an excellent example of education leaders working together to influence policy through the state court systems.

Education interest Groups• The larger of the two unions is the National

Education Association (NEA) with 2.7 million members, 50 state affiliates and thousands of local chapters.

• Indeed, the NEA is the largest union in the United States and is a force to be reckoned with in nearly every state (About NEA, 2002).

• The smaller union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has a million members. Concentrated primarily in large metropolitan areas and affiliated with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the AFT has historically been the NEA’s strong rival.

• Nonetheless, in recent years the two organizations have drawn closer; NEA members rejected a proposed merger in 1999, but the two groups collaborate extensively.

• The typology consists of four “stages” through which a state’s education establishment can evolve.

• In Stage I, Disparate Structure, education interest groups are unimportant; rather school districts represent their own interests in the state capital.

• At Stage II, Monolithic Structure, statewide interest groups become more important than the local districts in state education policy making .With the SDE acting as a coordinating agency, an education alliance that typically consists of the NEA, NSBA, and PTA affiliates, as well as one or two administrator groups, seeks to attain its policy goals.

• However, when a state reaches Stage III, Competitive Structure, this consensus breaks down; the passage of a collective bargaining law is often the precipitating factor.

• Statewide education interest groups are still important and active, but instead of cooperating they compete-often in an atmosphere of great distrust.

• In 1984 McGivney did not believe that any U.S. state (with the possible exception of Hawaii) had reached State IV, Statewide Bureaucratized, but he argued that it exists in Europe.

• At this stage, collaboration begins again, and it is formalized by the establishment of a state-level umbrella organization that coordinates the activities of all the education interest groups .

• Although somewhat dated, this typology provides a useful tool for conceptualizing the different ways in which a state’s education interest groups may interact.

1. Questions and activities for discussion• 1.1 In your opinion, is the professionalization of state

legislatures a positive trend or not? Be prepared to support your position.

• 1.2 Find out how the SBE and CSSO are selected in your state. To which of the models discussed in this chapter does your state conform, if any? How does this governance structure affect the relationships among the governor, the SBE, and the CSSO?

• 1.3 Identify The most important education and business interest groups in your state. How do they interact with each other?

• 1.4 Analyze and evaluate the coverage of state politics in a daily newspaper available in your area.

2. NEWS STORY FOR ANALYSIS: The politics of Education: CTA picks a fight

• Sacramento, CA-“Children aren’t widgets and a classroom is not an assembly line.”

• Those fighting words poured out of radios across the state this spring as the California Teachers Association launched Sacramento’s biggest education battle of the year.

• Their bill, AB 2160, would grant unprecedented authority to teachers and their union by including textbook choices, curriculum design and even school maintenance decisions in the collective bargaining negotiations that are now limited mostly to wages and benefits.

• Teachers say the bill is a reaction to many of the recent education reforms that have been popular with politicians but have increased the accountability and the burden on classroom teachers.

• If lawmakers set academic goals, teachers say, then they want to choose the tools to achieve those goals.

• Even before its first hearing, the bill triggered controversy and a high-stakes political showdown.

• It split the education community, with school administrators saying the process of negotiating wages is often too adversarial for constructive decision-making about books and curriculum. Several have branded the bill a “power grab” by the union.

• The bill also threatens to split the Democratic Party. Some party members, including Governor Gray Davis, have expressed concern about the merits of the plan.

• But the pressure to support it is considerable because the teachers’ union is the second largest contributor to the Democratic Party and two of the co-authors of the bill are Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson and Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin, Chair of the Assembly Education Committee.

• With the speaker’s critical backing, the bill is likely to succeed in the Senate.

• But the biggest political drama is the fact that some consider the bill a direct challenge to Davis, who has received substantial contributions from the union but has opposed it on some key education reforms.

• If the bill reaches his desk, it would be politically difficult and embarrassing for the governor to veto an education bill in an election year.

• The governor met with CTA president Wayne Johnson for three hours in April to talk about the bill, attention not bestowed on many bills or interest groups.

• Opponents of the CTA bill say it is “ludicrous” for Johnson to deny the union’s political manipulation, as he has recently done.

• “The CTA is a master at pressure and opportunistic tactics,” said Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Association.

• “They timed it well.” “One of the difficulties is that a lot of members of the legislature support unions,” said Laura Jeffries, lobbyist for the Association of California School Administrators. “And they are being told this is a way for teachers to get more of a voice.”

• “I wonder if the teachers aren’t shooting at the wrong target,” said the statewide school board association president, Dan Walden. “The problem is the Legislature. Maybe it’s time we put our heads together for a collaborative effort.”

• (Adapted by permission of the publisher from L.Gledhill, “The Politics of Education: CTA Picks a Fight”, California Journal, May 1, 2002, p.8. Copyright 2002 by the California Journal.)

Questions

• 1. Identify all the policy actors in this article and categorize them, using headings from this chapter.

• 2. Analyze the sources of power of the CTA, the Association of California School Administrators, and the California School Boards Association. Which is most powerful and why?

• 3. Based on the first sentence of this article, what do you think is the prevailing ideology of those members of the California Assembly who have passed accountability measures?

• 4. Discuss the challenges which the leaders of California’s “education establishment” would face if they were to try to act on Dan Walden’s suggestion.

3. CASE STUDY: “Stop the Bullies!” The politics of accountability

• In 1987, the Ohio General Assembly passed H.B. 231, adopting learning outcomes in mathematics, reading, writing, and citizenship; these outcomes then became the basis of Ohio’s first proficiency test, a ninth-grade test that students had to pass in order to graduate, starting in 1993.

• As the years passed, the legislature expanded its testing program, adding fourth, sixth, and twelfth-grade tests and including a science section. Increasingly, instruction in Ohio’s schools focused on preparing students to take the tests.

• Educators were not happy about this narrowing of the curriculum, and among themselves they questioned the tests’ validity. However, they made few attempts to get this policy changed; for they thought the legislature would interpret such efforts as opposition to accountability.

• In 1997, the General Assembly unveiled an even more rigorous version of its accountability system. With S.B. 55 it established a district report card system, based almost entirely on test scores.

• These report cards were to be released to the media each year so that taxpayers could see how effective (or ineffective) their public schools were.

• S.B. 55 also included a “Fourth Grade Guarantee” which required fourth-grade children who failed the reading section of their tests to be retained, starting in 2001, unless they had an individualized Education Plan (IEP) or the principal and teacher waived the requirement.

• Among themselves, Ohio educators joked sarcastically that soon the fourth-grade population would explode and elementary schools would need to expand their parking lots to accommodate all the teenaged students who would be driving to fourth grade.

• But the state’s parents were not amused, especially when it was revealed that about 42% of fourth graders regularly failed the reading test.

• Mary O’Brien and Teri Zeigler, mothers in an affluent Columbus suburb, formed a grassroots movement called “Stop Ohio Proficiency Tests,” adopting the slogan, “Stop the Bullies!”

• The “bullies” were the state’s legislators, appeared on television, gave testimony before the State Board of Education, and held noisy demonstrations on the lawn of the state capitol.

• Ohio’s political leaders responded quickly. Governor Taft appointed a Commission for Student Success to study the issue and make recommendations in December 2000.

• Although he urged his fellow Republicans in the legislature to wait for the commission report, several of them introduced bills to amend the policy during the fall of 2000.

• Meanwhile, educators began to speak out, too. The Ohio Education Association sponsored 33 public forums across the state to discuss problems with the tests.

• Administrators and their organizations began publicly to criticize both the tests and the district report cards.

• For example, Joyce Bowersock, an assistant superintendent, complained: “We’re punishing 9-year-olds because they’re not reading where… legislators think they should be reading. I think that’s comparisons between school districts.

• Districts represent different communities.” And John Stanford of the Ohio School Boards Association observed that the publication of district report cards hurt some districts’ reputations and made it hard for them to pass tax referenda.

• In December, the governor’s commission recommend reducing the number of tests. In 2001, the General Assembly accepted that recommendation and also greatly weekend the Fourth Grade Guarantee.

Questions:

• 1. Identify all the policy actors in this case study and categorize them, using headings from this chapter.

• 2. Were the state’s educators wise to delay their attack against this accountability system until the parents revolted? Why or why not?

• 3. Why were the parents so successful in getting the policy changed?

• 4. Discuss Superintendent McWilliams’s statement.

The End