From the One Room School House to NCLB: Policy Changes, Barriers Don't

The educational policies today do have more mechanisms that encourage and support implementation than in years past. Certain issues regarding race and the implementation of the policies have come together. For example, in 1850 the educational policy regarding Native Americans was to educate them into white American society. The government, in many of its broken treaties would promise a schoolhouse and a teacher for student’s six to sixteen. There was a group called The Friends who wanted the natives to be assimilated into the regular white schools. The government system was voluntary while the Friends system was comprehensive and compulsory. (Hamley, n.d.)

Today, school systems, counties, and states are struggling with strategies to overcome barriers that hinder greater fidelity. Recently, not only does the administrator have to deal with local issues, they also have to tackle the national education policies which radically changes the way the state policies (in most states) are implemented. This creates a larger burden not only for the state level policy makers but also for the teachers who implement the policies at both levels. States are scrambling to meet the policy of NCLB so they will not loose their federal funding by 2014 (Mohammed, Pisapia, and Walker, (2009).

Cooper, Fusarelli, and Walker (2004) cite Thelen and Steinmo (1992) by stating that both the goals and strategies that political agents pursue ‘are shaped by the institutional context. Whether is a educational policy for native American students or NCLB, there is a link between the institution and population the policy effects and the policy makers themselves. Theses authors present tokenism as a strategy to decrease barriers and they state that it is common to use tokenism when those responsible for implementing policy disagree with the policy itself.

Reference:

Hamley, J. (n.d.) Cultural Genocide in the Classroom: A History of the FederalBoarding School Movement in American Indian Education, 1875-1920. Unpublished dissertation. Retrieved from The Clarke Historical Library Online.

Mohammed, S., Pisapia, J., & Walker, D. (2009) Optimizing state policy implementation: The case of scientific based research components of the NCLB act. Current Issues in Education, 11(8). Retrieved on July 8, 2009 from http://cie.asu.edu/volume11/number8/

Cooper, B., Fusarelli, L., & Randall, E. (2004) Better Policies, BetterSchools: Theories and Applications. Pearson Publications. Retrieved on July 6, 2009 from electronic text book.