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The Policymaker's Program
The First Five Years
Implementation Tools
Volume II
Working with a blue-ribbon advisory board, the Danforth Foundation, in cooperation with the Education Commission of the States, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the National Governors' Association, has created a careful balance of "top-down" support for "bottom-up" reform of state education and human services systems. 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.
At the heart of the Policymakers' Program is a new way of thinking about how states and communities can best provide services. This new way of thinking emphasizes customers instead of clients, results as opposed to resources, prevention in place of correction, decentralization and deregulation instead of control and compliance, and collaboration and coordination in place of turf-protection and buck-passing. Above all, it insists that the family is the customer, not solely the child or an individual parent. And it seeks large-scale institutional change in how government operates rather than isolated demonstration projects designed to provide protective cover for on-going failure. This new way of thinking is not for the faint of heart.
Now in its sixth year, the Policymakers' Program has helped more than 300 legislators, agency heads, and governors and their advisors from some 40 states rethink education and human service organization and 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 and coordinatecl community action plans tailored to their specific needs.
This approach has required a broad vision, included many participants, and developed new and important collaborations - new arrangements between state agencies, municipal and county governments, frontline service providers, and families. The program that is described in this report is based not only on good research but also on the reflections and experiences of friends and colleagues with years of experience in service design and delivery. Whether active in government - as executive staff, legislators, agency heads, superintendents, teachers, or social workers - or community consumers of state and local services, these colleagues fully understand the "Catch-22" nature of government organization and the frustrating variety of ambiguities and complexities accompanying service delivery.
This two-volume report describes the origins and development of the Policymakers' Program in its first five years. Volume I explains why and how the Policymakers' Program was created. It also describes how the program operates and includes brief overviews of state action plans - descriptions of how states and communities organized themselves and what they accomplished. It addresses how individual states and communities have benefited from the program. Finally, it draws some lessons from the history of the effort
in the hope they may prove useful to philanthropic groups, state leaders, and others interested in supporting comprehensive community efforts to improve services for children and families. This volume is rounded out with five appendices describing the highlights of the program's introductory meetings in each of the first five years.
The companion Volume II provides detailed information on how the program was implemented, accompanied by tools for those who might want to replicate it, including letters inviting participation, meeting agendas, and a variety of frameworks related to large-scale institutional change.
Section A contains an Executive Summary of the report of the first five years of the Policymakers' Program given in Volume I.
Section B contains operational information for the January Legislative Chairs' and Governors' Meeting and the Policymakers' Summer Institute. An example letter of invitation and agenda for the Legislative Chairs' and Governors' Meeting are provided. An example application (if a competitive process is used), a letter of invitation (if an invitational process is used), agenda, briefing book contents, and a team facilitator's guide for the Summer Institute are also provided.
Sections C-F contain documents used with the teams prior to the Institute. The document in Section C describes the relationship of state policy to student achievement in one state. David Grissmer of the RAND Corporation was commissioned by the Danforth Foundation to develop a report specific to each state that sent a team to the Institute. The report in Section D is an example of the demographic report Harold "Bud" Hodgkinson of the Center for Demographic Policy developed for each Institute state team. Both Grissmer and Hodgkinson typically attended a pre-Institute team meeting, often with additional policymakers in attendance, to present the state-specific reports.
Sections E and F contain documents developed by Beverly Parsons of InSites for use with the teams at a pre-Institute meeting. "Analysis of State-Level System Change in Education and Human Services" (Section E) provides team facilitators with a guide to a one-day seminar to orient teams to what is meant by "system change." This document is particularly intended for teams that are focused on state-level system change. Section F contains a complementary document oriented toward system change at the local level.
The state-specific student achievement and demographic reports are intended to give team members a state-wide picture of the conditions and context of their state. The system-change documents are intended to help teams develop a framework for action planning within their particular context.
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Robert H. Koff
Vice President
The Danforth Foundation |
Access the PDF documents for Volume II.
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