ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this chapter is to examine why some educational policies fail to achieve their intended impacts. I begin by providing three possible explanations for policy failure – the complexity of the policy problem, the quality of policy design and the quality of implementation. While the success or failure of a policy is often attributed to the quality of its implementation in local districts and schools, this chapter focuses on the impact of policy design on both implementation and policy outcomes. The discussion begins by contrasting three US school reform programmes. Focusing on one key aspect of policy design – the discretion afforded to teachers – I illustrate how differing degrees of discretion influence policy implementation and contribute to the success or failure of the reform. I then introduce a New Zealand literacy initiative to explore another key aspect of policy design: the level of agreement between policy makers and implementing agents around the nature of the policy problem and how it should be addressed. I show how unrecognized and unresolved differences between practitioners and policy makers around such things as the intended focus of the policy and the outcomes sought can lead to implementation failure and low impact.
