Chapter 7 Setting The Stage And Getting On It: Issue Definition And Agenda Setting.

Chapter 7Setting The Stage And Getting On It:

Issue Definition And Agenda Setting

Focus Questions:

• How are policy issues defined?• Why is the definition of an issue

important?• What is a policy agenda and how do

policy issues get on it?• How can education leaders follow

and influence these stages of the policy process?

Perception And Reality In The Policy Process

• In an amusing story from his own high school days, scientist Benno Muller-Hill provides an example of how human perceptions of reality are shaped by others.

• As part of one of Muller-Hill’s high school science classes, the teacher set up a telescope on the school grounds and asked his students to line up to look through it;

• They were supposed to observe one of the planets and its moons. The first student announced that he could not see the planet; however, after the teacher showed him how to adjust the focus, he stated that he could see it clearly.

• After him, several other students looked through the instrument and said they could see the planet and its moons. But the boy just ahead of Muller-Hill in line loudly insisted that he saw nothing.

• The exasperated teacher looked through the telescope himself, and a strange expression came over his face. He had forgotten to remove the cover from the lens! Not a single one of the students had really seen the planet and its moons.

• For our purposes, whether the students pretended to see the planet and its moons in order to avoid embarrassment (and a poor grade) or whether they actually thought some speck of dust or glint of light on the lens was the planet is irrelevant.

• The point is that we human beings have a powerful desire to perceive the reality we think we should perceive.

• Breaking free of a definition of reality that those around us accept and expect us to accept also is extremely difficult for us.

• This tendency is especially important in the first two stages of the policy process: issue definition and agenda setting. If a policy issue is not well defined, it will not be perceived as important.

• If it is not perceived as important by a large number of people, it will never attract enough attention to reach the policy agenda.

• If it never reaches the policy agenda, it will certainly never become formal policy. Important as they are, these two stages of the policy process are relatively unfamiliar to the general public, including school leaders.

• In part, this is because they occur quietly and out of the glare of media attention.

•In part, too, it is because high school government classes and even many college courses in political science overlook them entirely, focusing instead on the more visible stages of policy formulation and adoption. •Yet issue definition and agenda setting are arguably the most important steps in the entire policy process, irreversibly influencing what happens next.

•Defining a policy issue is a political process that involves transforming a problem into an issue that the government can address. It is a discursive process, occurring through both written and spoken communication.•It also involves developing an attractive image of the issue and associating appealing symbols with it in order to attract public suppport.

Issue Definition: Setting The Stage

•Intelligent definition of an issue can increase the likelihood of political support, reduce the likelihood of opposition, and shape the policy debate. It sets the stage for the more visible phases of the process to follow.•In thinking about issue definition, distinguishing problems from policy issues is important. The world is full of problems-difficult situations that render life unpleasant and inconvenient.

•All educators know that schools abound with problems: school buses sometimes break down, teachers often feel out of sorts, and children’s minds are more often filled with fantasies derived from television than with reflections on their lessons.•Yet for the most part educators accept these problems either as an inevitable part of school life or as minor daily annoyances. They do not usually see them as issues requring government action.

•Figure 7.1 lists five common problems in scholls. Most educators would agree that these are problems, but they probably feel no urgency about dealing with them.•In Figure 7.2, however, each of the five problems has been transformed into a policy issue. Unlike the problems, the issues are controverial; they imply an interpretation of the problem, a set of values, and an understanding of the proper role of government.

•Leaders should understand that any problem can yield several policy issues.•Figure 7.3 lists five of the many issues that could be derived from the second problem noted in Figure 7.1-that of motivating students. During the issue-difinition stage, several competing understandings of a single problem are often under discussion simultaneously.

•Ultimately, however, only two or three will be accepted as valid definitions of the problem; the  winners will prevail primarily because of the skill with which their supporters define them.

1. Many teachers and principals suffer from low morale.

2. Students are often hard to motivate.

3. Many children change schools during the school year because their families move.

4. Children who spend a lot of time watching television and playing computer games may find school boring.

5. Educational resources are often used unwisely.

Figure 7.1 Five common problems in schools

1. Because low morale results from a lack of control over major professional decisions, teachers and principals ought to be empowered through site-based decision making.

2. If students had to maintain a C or higher average in order to obtain a driver’s license, their motivation in school would increase.

3. Parents with school-age children should be legally prohibited from moving outside their school attendance zone during the school year.

4. Only educational and motivational media should be available to children younger than 18.

5. If schools had to compete with each other for students, they would use their resources more wisely.

Figure 7.2 Five policy issues based on the problems in Figure 7.1

1. If students had to maintain a C or higher average in order to obtain a driver’s license.

2. If corporal punishment were restored in U.S. schools, we would see a dramatic increase in student motivation.

3. National standards and assessments would motivate students to work harder in school.

4. If teachers taught a curriculum that was more relevant to students and used more hands-on learning activities, motivation problems would decrease.

5. If schools were small enough that students could know their teachers and classmates better, students would be more motivated.

Figure 7.3 Five policy issues regarding student motivation

•Although issue definition is an intellectual process and therefore occurs within human minds, minds are found in bodies that must be located somewhere. This means that issue definition has to occur in specific places at identifiable times.•In the United States almost all education policy issues are defined within a loosely linked set of institutions that some call the education policy planning and research community(EPPRC).

The Education Policy Planning and Research Community

1. Annie Casey Foundation

2. Carnegie Corporiation

3. Danforth Foundation

4. Dewitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund

5. Ford Foundation

6. Kellogg Foundation

7. Lilly Endowrnent

8. MacArthur Foundation

9. Pew Charitable Trusts

10.Rockefeller Foundation

11.Spencer Foundation

Figure 7.5 Some foundations that sponsor educational policy research and initiatives.

American Enterprise Institute

Brookings Institution

Committee for Economic Development

Economic Policy Institute

Heritage Foundation

Hudson Institution

Manhattan Institute

RAND Corporation

Figure 7.6 Some policy research organizations (think tanks) that study education policy

Harvard University

Stanford University

University of Michigan

University of Pennsylvania

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Figure 7.7 University members of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education

•The development and spread of site-based management(SBM) provides a good example of how the EPPRC works. In the early 1990s, Ogawa analyzed articles, conference presentations, and printed materials from several national education organizations in an attempt to trace the development of the SBM movement.•He also interviewed 32 people.

The Spread of a Policy Idea: Site-based Management

•He traced the basic SBM idea back to a group of individuals who had worked at the National Institute of Education in the 1970s, several of whom had ties to Harvard University.•They had seen SBM as a way to improve education in the United States by professionalizing teaching. The late AlShanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers(AFT), had been intrigued by the idea and had persuaded three AFT locals to negotiate SBM into their contracts in the early 1980s.

•In 1985, the president of the ECS suggested to the president of the Carnegie Corporation that the foundation should become involved in studying linkages between education and the economy.•As part of this project, the Carnegie president established the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, which in turn established the Task Force on Teaching as a Profession.

•This task force conducted a study of teaching, publishing its findings in a 1986 report entitled A Nation Prepared.•In the same year, the National Governors’ A ssociation(NGA) published a report called Time for Results. •Both reports proposed SBM as a way to professionalize teaching, and both cited the three AFT locals who had negotiated SBM as positive examples.

•Next, the Carnegie Forum established a speakers’ bureau that provided speakers to present the report to teachers’ unions, education organizations, and business groups.•It also arranged for local newspapers and television stations to cover these speeches. •Ogawa found that these 1986 events consitituted a « watershed period » for the movement.

•After 1986, national education organizations such as the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), and both teachers’ unions began to hold SBM were appearing frequently in both scholarly and practitioner journals.

•Most of the authors were connected with CPRE, one of whose members is Harvard. Ogawa concluded that there is « an unofficial policy environment, one in which entrepreneurs shape and advance policy initiatives ».•This « unofficial policy environment » is, of course, what this book calls the EPPRC.

•Several facotrs influence which policy definitions succeed in moving onto an agenda, but the skill with with which the issue has been defined is probably the most important. In the next sections, the elements of good issue definition are described.

Elements of Skillful Issue Definition.

•Claims must be made about a problem in order to transform it into a policy issue. A claim is an assertion that grows out of a broader interpretation of the problem, its nature, and its causes.At least one of the claims made about a problem should indicate what has caused it.•For example, the fifth issue in Figure 7.2, « If schools had to compete with each other for students, they would use their resources more wisely, » implies two claims: (1)schools do not use their resources as efficiently as they might, and (2) a lack of competition among schools causes inefficiency.

Claims

•Descriptive material should be presented as evidence to support at least some of the most important claims made about a problem. The best forms of evidence are dramatic anecdotes, atrocity stories, and statistics-especially big statistics drawn from official sources.•For example, claims about the outrageous wastefulness of schools could be supported with a vivid description of the Mercedes Benz a school district allegedly provides for its superintendent and with numbers drawn from a major government report on the small percentage of school funds that actually reaches the calssroom.

Evidence

•A good issue definition includes a realistic solution for the problem it has identified and described. A realistic solution is both politically feasible and financially affordable. •Various forms of school choice have been suggested as ways to introduce more competition into education and encourage greater student achievement and more careful use of funds.•Given the current prevalence of conservative ideas and the public’s resistance to tax increases, the school-choice solution has broad appeal.

Solution

•A good issue definition is expressed in powerful language that links the issue to deeply held values, hopes, fears, and aspirations. Emotinal words and expressions, including assertions that the issue has a bearing on key national priorities such as military security and economic growth can further strengthen a definition. •So can the use of metaphors to describe the problem-especially metaphors drawn from medicine, family, warfare, or athletics.

Discourse

•Among the reasons for the appeal of school choice to many people is the fact that it lends itself to athletic metaphors of competition and can easily be linked to the American values of freedom and individualism.

•A skillfully defined issue is potentially appealing to a wide audience. Issues have broad appeal when they are relatively vague rather than narrowly specific, important to a high percentage of citizens, significant for the future as well as the present, and defined in laymen’s terms rather than in technical jargon.•In relation to these requirements, the school-choice issue does not fare as well as it does in relationship to the other criteria.

Broad Appeal

•It is a specific issue, primarily important to the parents of school children- a demographic group that has been declining in relative size for several decades. Such terms and phrases as voucher, interdistrict open enrollment, and charter school have a techical ring to them. •This is probably part of the explanation for the relatively slow progress of the schoo-choice movement ober the last forty years.

•Although any probblem can provide the basis for defining numerous policy issues, some definitions are more likely than other.•Ideas, values, and ideologies are extraordinarily important in issue definition; they shape and restrict the interpretations that people are able-or willing-to give problems, as well as the solutions they are willing to offer.

Constraints on Issue Definition

•No matter how brilliantly an issue has been defined within the EPPRC and no matter how much research university professors can produce in suppportof policy change, it may go nowhere, remaining the topic of heated debate in the ivory tower, but never attracting the interest of a politician.•In order to have a chance to become an actual policy, an issue must reach the policy agenda, and this occurs neither automatically nor easily.

The Policy Agenda

•A policy agenda comprises all those issues under serious discussion in relation to a specific policy domain. •In the broadest sense, the education policy agenda includes all issues under discussion at professional conferences, in education journals, among well-informed educators, in the mass media, among the general public, and among government officials.

Defining Policy Agenda

•However, political scientists distinguish several types of policy agendas. •Often an issue will appear on one or two agendas, but not all.•If an issue is ever to become official policy, it must eventually reach the governmental policy agenda.

The systemic Agenda•The systemic policy agenda is broad, consisting of all the issues people outside government are currently discussing. •In order to determine the composition of the systemic agenda in education, a school leader might skim the tables of several education journals, glance through some recent issues of Education Week, and add to them any education problems that the mass media are currently highlighting.

Types of Policy Agendas

•The professional agenda consists of those issues under discussion within various interest groups, education policy networks, and education associations as well as among informed professional educators.•School leaders frequently encounter these issues when they attend conferences or read current literature in their field.•The media agenda, in contrast, consists of those education issues that editors and other decision makers in the communications industry have decided to emphasize.

•As most school leaders know, this agenda often bears little resemblance to the professional one. The mass media are businesses that must attract customers in order to survive; therefore, they focus on exciting issues, such as school violence and sex crimes among teachers.•Finally, the third subagenda is the public agenda, which includes those education issues to which the general public are actually paying attention.

•This agenda is normally shorter than the other two, and may or may not overlap with them.•Usually, although not always, the public agenda is greatly influenced by the media agenda. •Together, the professional, media, and public agendas comprise the systemic agenda.

The Governmental Agenda•The governmental agenda consists of « the list of subjects or problems to which governmental officials... Are paying some serious attention at any given time ».•An issue on this agenda is being seriously discussed by government officials or has been scheduled for official action.•Obviously, many governmental policy agendas exist in education. The federal government has an agenda, as does each of the fifty states. •Moreover, each of these agendas consists of several components, such as bills slated for introduction or legislative action; court cases on the docket or working their way through the system; and decisions pending in regulatory agencies.

How Agendas Relate to Each Other•The most important fact to understand about policy agendas is that access to them is highly competitive. As a result, most issues that have been defined never rach the governmental, public, or media agenda at all. •The reason is simple: the « carrying capacity » of each agenda is severely limited. Members of the general public do not have enough time to inform themselves about every issue, much less discuss them all.•Newspapers and Web sites have limited space for text; and television and radio have even more limited broadcasting time for education news.

•Above all, legislatures, courts, and administrative agencies have tightly limited resources and cannot introduce every conceivable bill, hear every conceivable case, or make a decision on every controversial point.•Thus, the relationship among the items on the agenda is competitive; is a new item moves onto an agenda, an older one usually moves off.•As items move from one agenda to another, a selection process occurs. Some issues remain on the systemic agenda for a long time and attract considerable attention, eventually winning this competition and reaching a governmental agenda.•Most, however, are discussed for a short while and then vanish, losing the competition.

•Typically, far more education policy issues are on the professional agenda than the other agendas can accommodate. Some issues, however, do move from the professional agenda to the media agenda and spread from there to the general public. •Policy makers-who are usually aware of all three systemic subagendas-select from them a few issues they wish to actively support. Other patterns of movement are possible, however. •For example, in the late 1970s, the public in several states became incensed about escalating school taxes, and organized to put tax limitation initiatives on the ballot.

•This « tax revolt » is an excellent example of a situation in which an issue was both defined and placed on the policy agenda by the general public. •In most cases, however, eduation policy issues follow the path of development suggested in Figure 7.2.

Getting on the Governmental Policy AgendaThe Story of School Choice•Usually, a new idea languishes on the shelf for a long time before it reaches a governmental policy agenda, is acted upon, and becomes official policy. •School choice is a good example. •First seriously proposed in 1962 by Milton Friedman, a professor at the University of Chicago, it was considered an odd professorial type of idea throughout the 1960s.

•By the early 1970s, however, a few radicals and liberals had become interested in it, even though Friedman was a well-known conservative. •Because it was an item on the professional agenda, people such as Christopher Jencks and James Coleman picked up the idea and advocated it as a way to empower poor parents and equalize educational opportunity for their children.•In eardly 1970s, school choice moved briedfly onto a governmental agenda when the federal government funded a choice experiment in Alum Rock, California.

•This pilot program wa generally considered a failure, and choice dropped off the governmental agenda, but remained on the professional agenda.•In 1980, conservative Ronald Reagan was elected president. Propelled by the professional agendas of many of the conservative groups that had supported him, he moved choice onto the governmental agenda again by advocating tuitions tax credits and vouchers in his speeches. •Soon both forms of choice were introduced as bills in Congress...and introduced, and introduced, always going down to defeat.

•By the late 1980s, however, states such as Minnesota and Ohio had not only moved choice onto their governmental policy agendas, buth had also adopted some forms of it as policy. •Since then, three states have enacted public voucher programs and 37 have adopted charter school policies.•Thus, after languishing on various agendas for 30 years, school choice rapidly moved onto governmental agendas and into official policy during the last decade of the twentieth century.

Public Officials and Agendas.•The story of the movement of school choice from a newly defined policy issue to the professional agenda to various governmental agendas illustrates how many issues finally reach the governmental agenda.•Major political leaders-especially the president and governors, but also prominent legislators-often play a central role in agenda setting.•Because they frequently give speeches and hold press conferences, they can call attention to an issue and keep attention focused on it.•Moreover, because their public appearances are by definition media events, they can easily move an issue onto the media agenda.

Other Pathes to the Agenda.•Issues can reach the governmental policy agenda in other ways. Sometimes a « triggering even »occurs, clarifying or dramatizing an issue that has hitherto attracted little attention.•Triggering events are especially likely to propel issues related to health and safty onto center stage.

Staying on a Policy Agenda•Although gaining access to any of the policy agendas is difficult, dropping off them is extremely easy. Indeed, all policy agendas are marked by great instability; issues that were hot in January may be forgotten by June.•Once an issue has faded, reviving interest in it is hard because it now seems out of date.•Among political scientists this phenomenon is known as the issue-attention cycle; in every policy area issues suddenly become the cneter of enormous attention on several agendas...and then, as suddenly, « lurch » out of everone’s thoughts.

•In part, this instability results from the tendency of the mass media to prefer new ideas to old. •In part, too, it results from the tendency of the general public to prefer novelty.•However, after several years off the agenda, old ideas may resurface in a slightly different form and with a new name and reach the agenda again.

Think and Learn.1.Questions and activities for discussion

1.1 Select a current education problem definition. Identify the claims made about it and the evidence used to support those claims. Then suggest how this problem definition could be effectively changed.

1.2 Select a current education problem definition. Identify the claims made about it and the evidence used to support them. Then suggest how the issue could be redefined.

1.3 Identify a nondecision in your district or state. In your opinion, why has it remained a nondecision? What does this nondecision reveal about the constraints on education policy making in your environment?

1.4 By skimming recent issues of publications put out by business and education groups, develop a list of the education issues on the professional policy agenda. Then, by skimming several recent local newspapers, develop a list of the education policy issues on the media agenda. Compare the two agendas. What differences do you notice? How do you explain them?

1.Questions and activities for discussion

1.1 Select a current education problem definition. Identify the claims made about it and the evidence used to support those claims. Then suggest how this problem definition could be effectively changed.

1.2 Select a current education problem definition. Identify the claims made about it and the evidence used to support them. Then suggest how the issue could be redefined.

2. Pro-con debate: Is there really an education crisis?

YES: No one who is willing to look at the evidence can deny that there is a education crisis in the United States. Since standards were lowered in the silly Sixties, student performance on tests such as the SAT and the ACT has plummeted. In almost every international comparison, U.S. students make a poor showing; it is a cause for rejoicing in the education establishment if they rank average rather than dead last.

• Our schools are not even safe anymore; both children and teachers fear for their lives as gang members roam the halls, looking for someone to bully or rob.

• Many schools even have metal detectors at the entrances these days to check students for weapons as they enter. Finally, school buildings are in a shocking state—they are filthy with graffiti scrawled everywhere and basic equipment in disrepair.

• How can children learn well in such setting? All these problems seriously hamper the ability of the United States to compete effectively in today’s global economy.

• NO: There is a crisis in the United States today, but it’s not an education crisis—it’s an economic crisis.

• Real wages have stagnated for a quarter of a century now; middle-class families have a hard time buying a house and providing college educations for their children; the gap between the rich and the poor is constantly growing.

• The United States now has a higher rate of child poverty than any other developed country. Often these indicators are hard to see, but we can see more obvious ones.

• Decades of insufficient tax revenues have led to deferred maintenance, causing our inner cities to decline, becoming shabby crime centers in which few people would willingly live, work, or shop.

• And much of our once-prized interstate highway system is now pocked with potholes, again because of inadequate public funds for their repair. Of course, all these problems spill over into the schools, which simply reflect the larger society.

• Government and business leaders prattle about an education crisis, hoping we will not notice the real economic crisis… for which they, not educators, are responsible. Fix the economy and the schools will improve.

3. NEWS STORY FOR ANALYSIS: MAKING SCHOOLS MORE EFFICIENT

•Official government statistics make no attempt to measure productivity in public education. In particular, there’s enormous dispute over how to measure the “output” of education.

•But assuming that test scores are a reasonable measure of educational output, public schools are getting less productive by the year.

•In 1972-1973, each $1,000 of spending per pupil “bought” 63 points on the National Assessment of Educational Progress math test for 17-year-olds, according to calculations by Harvard University economist Caroline M. Hoxby.

•By 1998-1999, that same level of spending “bought” only 39 points. The trend is similar for other tests and ages. To correct for inflation, all spending is stated in 1999 dollars.

•What’s the solution? Hoxby argues that educational productivity rises if parents have more choice among schools. That forces schools to become more efficient to retain students.

•For example, in metro areas with many school districts, such as Boston and Pittsburgh, parents can easily switch school districts by moving to another town in the same area. In other areas, a large number of traditional private schools provide an effective alternative to the public school system.

•By comparing test scores in areas with and without choice, Hoxby concludes that competition makes public schools more productive.

•She calculates that the productivity of American schools would rise 28% if all metro areas had ample inter-district competition and many private schools.

•She also finds good results from newer forms of choice, such as vouchers in Milwaukee and Arizona.

Questions:1. In one sentence, state the definition of the education policy issue presented in this article.2. What claims does the author provide to support the claims?3. What evidence does the author provide to support the claims?4. In your opinion, why did Business Week Online think that its readers would find Hoxby’s research interesting?5. Challenge this issue definition and redefine the issue, using other evidence with which you are familiar and offering a different solution.

The End