When Policy Meets Practice: Why School Mandates Often Miss the Mark

The View from the Ground Floor
It’s safe to assume that policymakers have the best intentions when proposing new provisions for schools. Initiatives for literacy, new pedagogical strategies, and requirements for professional development all sound beneficial to the school community. But what do these regulations look like from the ground floor as a teacher?

In my experience, many teachers were not fond of change at all. And I didn’t blame them. Teachers who had been at the school for 15+ years had observed nearly every type of change: from the creation of the Common core to the beginning of PLCs and even more recently bans on curriculum regarding DEI, they have seen it all. When these regulations trickle down from the state, administrators typically come up with a plan to disseminate the requirements to their staff. Teachers see the decisions being made and are told to comply with them.

I experienced this discomfort while teaching at a public middle school that needed to comply with a recent bill prioritizing literacy and critical thinking in all classrooms. In response, the administration decided that all staff must post the same vocabulary words on a word wall in their classroom, along with delivering weekly reading comprehension lessons to their homeroom students. This measure was intended to provoke students’ curiosity and level the playing field for students who didn’t know much academic language. But even the best educational ideas, when shared with teachers hastily, impede the positive impact.

On the day before school started, printers were whirring with lists of 20 words like “concur” and “refute,” teachers were concerned about where the word wall would fit in their room, and questions were unanswered on who would be responsible for creating these reading comprehension lesson plans. You might imagine that non-ELA teachers were not happy with this new responsibility—and you would be right. In fact, many teachers skipped through their reading lessons and instead gave students silent reading time. The teachers didn’t understand why this responsibility had been given to them or what effect it would have on students’ well-being, so they didn’t give it their full effort. It was never explained to them. 

So, while state legislators have good intentions in their policies, that doesn’t ensure that the legislation will be attuned to teachers' needs or interests, or that it will include the details needed for meaningful implementation. This may lead to a desensitization of new policies for teachers, as they watch mandates come and go without any input in what’s prioritized and why.

What Research Reveals About Teacher Influence
To provide more context as to why policymaking might feel distant for teachers, I leaned on research that coined terms to explain how substantially teachers affect policy performance.

Michael Lipsky defines teachers as “street-level bureaucrats” because of their direct impact on students and their ability to use discretion in daily work (Lipsky, 1980). He argues that teachers “engender controversy because they must be dealt with if policy is to change” (Lipsky, 1980, pg. 8). From this perspective, when street-level bureaucrats and their managers oppose each other, the former wins by performing at “less than full capacity” (Lipsky, 1980, pg. 17). Simply put, as street-level bureaucrats, teachers may impede policy implementation by putting in minimal effort if they don’t share their superiors’ objectives. Although Lipsky often uses dated and unhelpful deficit language surrounding teachers that frames teachers as the cog in the wheel that purposefully breaks, he does illuminate one important feature. The notion of street-level bureaucrats as teachers showcases the distance between teachers and their managers, and effectively the even larger gap between teachers and legislators when making decisions that affect teachers’ careers.

More recent research has framed teachers in a positive light: as change agents instead of street-level bureaucrats. Brown et al. found that when teachers can exhibit agency, they commit to making changes (Brown et al., 2022). Other studies found that the variables ‘vision’ and ‘empowerment’ are two that enabled teachers to act as change agents (Muijs & Harris, 2003), (Lai & Cheung, 2015). They conclude by calling for teachers to be given a more forward role in policy creation, stating that “teachers should be central and instrumental to educational change rather than positioned as the passive recipients of externally mandated reforms (Brown et al., 2022, pg. 12). This reflects a bottom-up approach in educational change where teachers have the means to represent their everyday experiences to be reflected in policy. If mandates continue to trickle down, teachers must see the purpose behind the change being proposed for it to be effective.

What Policy Could Look Like with Teachers at the Table
Because teachers are such an integral part of policy implementation, it is surprising how disconnected policy provisions are from teachers' needs. Even provisions aimed at alleviating teacher challenges often lack the funding and planning needed to be effective: one example being cell phone bans.

It is also important to highlight that regardless of researchers' findings, teachers make meaningful change every day. They critically consider their students’ needs during their planning, executing, and assessing. They continue to show up for their students and families regardless of new mandates and policies. But thinking back to my initial example, imagine how much more effective the word walls could have been if the administration had aligned the process with teachers’ needs. Even a simple survey or meeting to discuss how the plans lead to end goal objectives could go a long way in ensuring teachers feel empowered to execute the policy and understand it, as opposed to feeling that their opinions do not matter.