The Policymakers' Program
The First Five Years
Executive Summary

The Danforth Foundation 1 Metropolitan Square 211 N Broadway St. St. Louis, MO 63102 (314) 588-1900 JULY, 1998

 

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The Danforth Foundation 1 Metropolitan Square 211 N. Broadway Street St. Louis, Missouri 63102 Cosponsors Education Commission of the States 707 17th St., Suite 2700 Denver, Colorado 80202 National Conference of State Legislatures 1560 Broadway, Suite 700 Denver, Colorado 80202 National Governors' Association 444 N. Capitol Street, NW Suite 267 Washington, D.C. 20001 Advisory Board Members Bill Purcell Advisory Board Chairperson The Child and Family Policy Center Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies Nashville, Tennessee Honorable Irma Hunter Brown Arkansas State Representative Little Rock, Arkansas Honorable Ron Cowell Pennsylvania State Representative Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Christopher Cross President Council for Basic Education Washington, D.C. Thomas Davis President Septagon Industries, Inc. Sedalia, Missouri Wi1helmina Delco Adjunct Professor Community College Leadership Program University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas Susan Fuhrman Dean Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Robert H. Koff Vice President The Danforth Foundation St. Louis, Missouri Anne Mitchell President Early Childhood Policy Research Climax, New York Honorable Carolyn Oakley Oregon State Representative Albany, Oregon Ted Sanders President Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Illinois Lola Schreiber Gettysburg, South Dakota Jacqueline Romer-Sensky Deputy Chief of Staff Office of the Governor Columbus, Ohio Honorable Jeb Spaulding Vermont State Senator Montpelier, Vermont Gary Stangler Director Missouri Department of Social Services Jefferson City, Missouri Susan Traiman Director The Education Initiative The Business Roundtable Washington, D.C.

 

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			THE POLICYMAKERS' PROGRAM: The First Five Years EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
	The service delivery system is in trouble.		Why aren't our children learning more? Why are so many young people in trouble in so many different ways - experimenting with drugs and alcohol, performing poorly in school, dropping out, becoming parents when scarcely more than children themselves, or running afoul of the juvenile justice system? A big part of the answer to these questions is that many American families are in trouble. They are in trouble everywhere, and in the inner-city, they are in crisis. Another part of the answer is less obvious but equally significant. The service delivery system itself is in trouble. It has become so fragmented and diffuse, cumbersome and inefficient, that it s hard to make it work, and it often fails to meet the needs for which it was designed. The Policymakers' Program is designed to help state and local leaders create a vision for children and families - and to define a process for achieving their vision that respects the unique traditions of each state and its communities. As a ten-year initiative, launched in 1992, the Policymakers' Program will end in 2002. Now in its sixth year, the program has helped more than 300 officials from some 40 states rethink service delivery in their communities. From those 40 states, the program selected 15 state teams (ranging in size from 12 to 27 people) and helped them develop comprehensive community action plans tailored to their specific needs. THE MISSION The Policymakers' Program has an ambitious mission-engaging state policymakers in the task of ensuring that all children and youth succeed in developing into healthy and productive citizens, capable of learning not only in school but throughout their lives. Within that broad umbrella, the Policymakers' Program was designed to create five results for children and families: A safe environment for children Children coming to school ready to learn Improved student achievement Healthy families Healthy and productive communities

 

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	State and local agencies and personnel need to become more entrepreneurial, active, and flexible.		Within this mission, the Policymakers' Program recognizes four key realities about today's policy environment: The education and human service systems are under enormous stress and have difficulty coping with today's demands. Neither schools nor social service agencies can assume full responsibility for the development of young people and effective education for all. Policy has to be grounded in the assumption that the first responsibility in these areas rests on the family. To provide first-rate services and education to children, youth, and families, new patterns of inter-relationship and responsibility among federal, state, and local levels of government must be developed. Although the problems are universal, most solutions are local. After five years of program operations, it is increasingly clear that a major reorientation of policy thinking is required to improve the delivery of education and other services. State and local agencies and personnel need to become more entrepreneurial, active, and flexible. In many ways, according to the research presented to program participants, the attributes that characterize effective programs are undermined by the attributes of most existing government systems. Research consistently shows that effective programs in many education and social service areas are comprehensive and flexible, responsive and individualized, and provided by front-line workers encouraged to exercise a great deal of discretion. But most programs are the reverse - fragmented and categorical, rule-driven and standardized, and delivered by front-line workers who are hemmed in by so many restrictions they have hardly any discretion at all. It is no accident that although effective programs continually reinvent themselves because they are relentlessly oriented toward solving problems, existing systems change little over time. A UNIQUE STRUCTURE The Policymakers' Program consists of two parts, both supported by the Danforth Foundation and implemented with its three cooperating partners, the Education Commission of the States, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the National Governors' Association. The first part is comprised of a series of meetings on an annual cycle; the second part includes financial support and technical assistance, also funded by the Foundation. With this support and these resources, state teams and state-and-community teams are encouraged to develop action plans to reinvent service delivery in their areas. States have developed and implemented a broad array of change strategies in response to the Policymakers' Program. One of the attractive features of the program is that it makes no effort to impose a template or blueprint on state actions. There is no attempt to force a one-size-fits-all solution on state leaders.

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	The most successful participating states demonstrated five major benefits.		New York recently passed legislation on school-community collaboration, supported by pooled funding from six state agencies and full-time staff. Utah, through its FACT (Families, Agencies, and Communities Together) initiative, has implemented collaborative funding for communities to better serve at-risk children and their families. Vermont initially built statewide public ownership over improving outcomes for children, youth, and families and then helped the city of Barre identity areas in need of attention by packaging data in a user-friendly fashion. PROGRAM BENEFITS Program participants invariably describe the value of their participation in glowing terms. Over the years, participants have identified five major program benefits in their states: Building relationships among key leaders who, in their own arenas, can support the new directions Establishing a shared conceptual framework among leaders regarding what must be changed to achieve better results for children and families Helping leaders produce concrete action plans Providing leaders with specific examples of what works Beginning to document the effects on children The most successful participating states demonstrated most of these major benefits during the life of the program. KEY ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS Over the five years of the program, nine significant steps appeared most critical to advancing state action plans. Program planners began thinking of these as key elements of success. Start with Numbers. The use of data to aid decision making and evaluate results has been an integral part of the Policymakers' Program from the outset. The most effective teams turned out to be those which built data usage into their plans to monitor the conditions of children and families and to tie data to specific benchmarks of achievement. Think of Systems, Not Programs. "If you are building a house and you leave a plank out, the house is basically all right. But it you leave a plank out of a boat, it sinks, one expert told program par-

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	Key Elements of Success Start with Numbers Think of Systems not Programs Adopt Collaboration as a Way of Life Engage the Public in Terms it Can Understand Develop Capacity in Local Communities Create a Critical Mass of People Who Care Beg, Borrow, and Steal Effective Policy Ideas Follow the Money Insist on Results		ticipants. Build boats, not houses, was his advice - that is to say, think comprehensively about government systems, not narrowly about government programs. Adopt Collaboration as a Way of Life. Collaboration is not just a question of "What can you do for me?" or "What can I do for you?" It is more than simply coordination and cooperation. Collaboration implies shared budgets, joint accountability for results, integrated professional development activities, and the development of new relationships across branches of government, between government agencies, and between state and local units of government. The most effective collaboration is grounded in the question "What together can we do for the people we are supposed to serve?" Engage the Public in Terms It Can Understand. The most effective programs demonstrated strong, clear communication strategies, both within and across agencies and between government and the public. The Policymakers' Program has consistently emphasized that engaging the public on its own terms - using communication as "public engagement - is vital to the service reform agenda. It is a method for involving the public in designing system change. Develop Capacity in Local Communities. As experienced in most of the participating states, persuading state agencies to collaborate is child's play compared to the challenge of creating a system of "devolution," designed to put authority and decisions for the same programs in local hands. It is the difference between "horizontal" service integration at the state level and a combination of "vertical" integration between state and local agencies and "horizontal" integration at the community level. Create a Critical Mass of People Who Care. Creating and sustaining the conditions for successful systems reform involves human resources in a big way. The human side of the equation has at least two dimensions: first, finding the right people and investing in them, and second, finding enough of them. Most state teams discovered they had to create a critical mass of people who understood what needed to be done, and they had to expand the size of the state team dramatically when it returned from Policymakers' Program events. Beg, Borrow, and Steal Effective Policy Ideas. "There are very weak patent infringement laws prohibiting state governments from stealing ideas from each other," one state official told his peers at a Policymakers' Program meeting. His advice: beg, borrow, and steal good ideas from every source. As this participant's comments make clear, when leaders from Missouri, Pennsylvania, and lowa describe shared ideas about governance, statewide congresses, or budgeting for results, their colleagues from other states sit up and pay attention.

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			Follow the Money. Talking about systems reform is cheap and easy. The real action occurs when you budget resources to put behind the rhetoric. Several states in the Policymakers' Program are addressing one of the biggest political and programmatic challenges in the change process - budgeting and reallocating financial resources. Too often, changes are piloted with somebody else's money. Unfortunately, when the outside money disappears, the changes generally disappear too. If reform is to take root and grow, the official systems of the state, and the financial resources backing them up, must be redesigned to nourish change. Insist on Results. Finally, one of the foundation themes of the Policymakers' Program from the outset was the need to insist on results, assess progress, and be accountable to the public. One expert told participants they needed to worry about five major outcome and assessment measures: (1) outcome measures on the status of children; (2) self-evaluating delivery systems with ongoing evaluation; (3) systematic and timely performance assessment; (4) a reliable information system; and (5) public information about children's welfare and the performance of the system. "If you're going to get into this," he said, "you have to be serious about it." LESSONS LEARNED In addition to those key elements of success, important lessons have been learned about mounting these efforts. How should they be initiated? Who should be involved? When is the right time to begin? If another foundation or association wanted to start something similar, what could it learn from the experience of the Policymakers' Program? Eleven lessons appear to be most important: Give Ownership Away. At the program design level, no single individual or organization possesses all of the relevant knowledge and expertise required. Program design is improved immeasurably when the circle of ownership is expanded so that more people feel they have a stake in the program's success. Similar considerations apply to program implementation - both at the state and community levels. State officials have a much better understanding of what is required to assist communities within their borders than national program designers; and nobody understands community needs better than community leaders, either civic or elected. It is not an abrogation of responsibility to give program ownership away to state and local leaders, but an act of faith in the basic good sense of democratic decision-making at the community level. Work with Intermediary Organizations. One of the keys to getting the Policymakers' Program off the ground quickly was the Foundation's ability to work with several respected organizations representing key state-level constituencies. The Education

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			Commission of the States, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the National Governors' Association each brought their own expertise and point of view to bear, and each of them helped provide instant credibility for the effort. Model the Behavior You Seek. Two convictions are essential to the Policymakers' Program. First is the notion that state agencies and leaders need to be much more open to new ideas. Second is that new styles of cooperation and collaboration must be developed. Danforth and its partners found their behavior needed to model both of these convictions. In being open to new ideas, Danforth and its three partners wound up with a Policymakers' Program in the fifth year that they had not envisioned in the first. It includes a state and community Summer Institute, on-site technical assistance, convening teams prior to participating in the Institute, and state-specific briefing papers. Moreover, Danforth and its partners often found themselves engaged in the same tug-of-war with each other (and within their own organizations) that they were trying to diminish or eliminate at the policy level. Working through these challenges was time-consuming and difficult. Although not always successful, it was always time well spent. Rely on Peers to Carry the Message. Without a doubt, the most successful aspect of the Policymakers' Program was its reliance on a mix of experts to describe problems and to frame solutions while state officials and legislators described how they had approached the problem. The extent of cross-fertilization of policy ideas from state to state was one of the more visible aspects of the program's success, an aspect directly attributable to the program's decision to rely on peers to make the case and carry the message. Build the Capacity to Support Collaboration. Sustained collaboration occurs only when funds, time, and personnel are allocated to its accomplishment. State and local policymakers need to understand the power of data in creating a climate conducive to change, supporting new policies, and sustaining change agendas over time. Improving outcomes for children is dependent on measuring, tracking, and reporting outcome data. Policymakers and foundations should not underestimate the importance and the difficulty of this challenge. Building this capacity in states and communities is critical if changes in practice and policy are to continue. Understand that Different Communities Are at Different Stages. It is impossible to overstate the need for flexibility in initiating and supporting an effort such as this. Each of the participating states is at a different stage of development in terms of collaboration and cooperation, and a program such as the Policymakers' Program needs to respect that diversity. In the end, respecting the process required to move the change-agenda along became almost as

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	Lessons Learned Give Ownership Away Work with Intermediary Organizations Model the Behavior You Seek Rely on Peers to Carry the Message Build the Capacity to Support Collaboration Understand that Different Communities Are at Different Stages Collaboration is Simply a Means to an End Focus Relentlessly on Practice, Data, and Results Stability is Essential Visionaries Have to Be Practical Too Don't Underestimate the Power of Leadership		important as the agenda. Change takes time. Here, process became the vehicle for developing shared understandings and a commitment to a vision of new possibilities; for clarifying who was responsible for what and why they were responsible for it; for holding individuals and agencies accountable; and for helping governors and legislators get their policies aligned. Collaboration is Simply a Means to an End. Although process is important, the program had to continuously guard against letting the process become the point of the whole exercise. Collaboration (or the process of collaboration) is not an end in itself; it is simply a means to an end. Attaining the end, that is, delivering services more effectively so that state and community agencies can actually demonstrate results for children and vulnerable families, required going beyond the vocabulary of cooperation to address the practical difficulties of collaborative implementation. It required taking up tough and difficult issues such as joint budgeting, shared accountability, and assessment of results. But after all, that was the point - improving results for children by delivering services more effectively, not collaborating simply for the sake of collaboration. Focus Relentlessly on Practice, Data, and Results. One of the most effective strategies the Policymakers' Program developed was a means of sidestepping partisan and ideological disputes by concentrating on best practice, poring over data, and insisting on meaningful results. Most of this strategy, particularly the emphasis on data and results, was conscious and planned. When data and results are presented in a user-friendly fashion, policymakers immediately see their value. The lessons learned here are that data need to be comprehensible; evaluations need to be related to policy questions; and policymakers need to participate in selecting the indicators, because that way they come to understand what is being measured and why it is important. Stability is Essential. The need for continuity amidst change is a paradox; nonetheless, stability is critical to the systems-change agenda. The continuity required is not stability in the system, but stability in the change agenda and the reform impulse. The loss of powerful champions in either the legislative or executive branches can be fatal to the reform effort, hence there is a significant need to bring on board mid-level employees capable of keeping change on track, regardless of what happens at the top. Unless the bureaucracy is on board, whenever turnover occurs at the top, the most regressive features of the status quo will almost inevitably resurface. Visionaries Have to be Practical Too. A second paradox of the change process is that while vision is important, reformers who don't have their feet on the ground aren't likely to get very far. Visionaries have to be practical too. To get anything done in a public environment, reformers need to make sure they bring the right

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			people to the table. In an environment that is not only public but also political, the plan must be something that provides for some demonstrable results within two years. Vision was one of the most important attributes the Policymakers' Program tried to develop during its processes. But to move forward, the vision needed to be harnessed to an effective plan. In the end, it turned out the visionaries had to be practical, too. Don't Underestimate the Power of Leadership. Over the years, states that have been the most successful in moving forward in their education and human services collaboration have had powerful leaders as advocates within the legislative and executive branches of government. In particular, progress appeared to be enhanced by a supportive governor, bipartisan legislative leadership, and a history of collaborative leadership on the part of the heads of state agencies responsible for such areas as education, human services, and health. Leaders willing to create and expand such a history is essential. A FOUNDATION FOR THE FUTURE Danforth and its partners have put down a sturdy foundation for future success with the Policymakers' Program. Several hundred state leaders from dozens of states have been exposed to the ideas underlying the program. Teams from 15 states have completed a detailed process for developing statewide plans. Two communities in two states have become formally involved in the effort. As the program has moved forward, the partners have learned a great deal. What remains to be seen is whether the promise at the state level can be duplicated in local communities. It also remains to be seen if success in a relative handful of communities can be brought to scale and replicated broadly elsewhere. Finally, it is of paramount importance that participating teams and state personnel become self-sufficient. They must develop their own capacity to handle data, to develop good reports, to become team facilitators, and generally to move consistently toward the changes they seek on their own - after the Foundation and all its consultants have left. These remaining challenges will define the agenda of the Policymakers' Program for the next five years.

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			FURTHER INFORMATION
			For additional information about the Policymakers' Program, contact one of the following: Bill Purcell, Program Director The Child and Family Policy Center Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies (615) 343-9865 Gerrit Westervelt Education Commission of the States (303) 299-3600 Julie Bell National Conference of State Legislatures (303) 830-2200 Dane Linn National Governors' Association (202) 624-5300 Robert Koff Vice President The Danforth Foundation (314) 588-1900