Abstract
After focusing on the first stages of the policymaking process, in which policymakers define issues and construct educational priorities, this chapter draws attention to later stages of the process, including policy implementation and evaluation (Jann and Wegrich 2007). Research on these topics focuses on the instruments employed by policymakers, and the effects of these instruments on implementation and the evaluation of the results of policy programs. In this chapter, we focus on several issues relating to the implementation of education policy: (a) we discuss the manner in which policymakers choose policy instruments and deploy supervision to make sure that strict implementation of the goals is carried out; (b) we delve into how participants in the implementation of education policy at the bottom of the hierarchy are involved in the development of the applied policy, and how their actions shape the nature of the policy at the institutional and national levels; (c) we discuss the various functions that the evaluation of a policy executes; and (d) we discuss the manner in which systemic changes and reforms in recent decades have amounted to a central strategy in the implementation of education policy.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Addi-Raccah, A., & Grinshtain, Y. (2018). Teachers’ capital in view of intensive parental involvement in school: The case of teachers in high socio-economic status schools in Israel. Research Papers in Education, 33(5), 599–619.
Aflalo, A. (2012). Contradictions in teachers’ perceptions: The hidden barrier to the assimilation of computer technologies. Dapim, 54, 167–139. [in Hebrew].
Avigur-Eshel, A., & Berkovich, I. (2019). Introducing managerialism into national educational contexts through pseudo-conflict: A discursive institutionalist analysis. International Journal of Educational Development, 68, 1–8.
Berkovich, I. (2017). Educational reform hyperwaves: Reconceptualizing Cuban’s theories of change. Journal of Educational Change, 18(4), 413–438.
Berriet-Solliec, M., Labarthe, P., Laurent, C., & Baudry, J. (2011, February 17–18). Empirical validity of the evaluation of public policies: Models of evaluation and quality of evidence. 122nd EAAE Seminar: Evidence-Based Agricultural and Rural Policy Making: Methodological and Empirical Challenges of Policy Evaluation,Ancona, Italy.
Bialik, G., Gibton, D., & Dror, Y. (2018). Now you see it, now you don’t: Understanding high conflict and high ambiguity as core policy dimensions through field-level leaders’ perspectives. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 17(1), 52–77.
Bjork, L. G., & Blase, J. (2009). The micropolitics of school district decentralization. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(3), 195–208.
Bovens, M., Hart, P., & Kuipers, S. (2008). The politics of policy evaluation. In M. Moran, M. Rein, & R. E. Goodin (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public policy (pp. 319–335). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Central Bureau of Statistics. (2011). Forecast for additional classrooms in schools, 2012–2016. Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics. [in Hebrew].
Central Bureau of Statistics. (2014). The face of Israeli society report, No. 7. Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics. [in Hebrew].
Choshen, M., & Korach, M. (2014). Jerusalem: Facts and trends 2014. Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research.
Coburn, C. E. (2003). Rethinking scale: Moving beyond numbers to deep and lasting change. Educational Researcher, 32(6), 3–12.
Coburn, C. E. (2005). Shaping teacher sensemaking: School leaders and the enactment of reading policy. Educational Policy, 19(3), 476–509.
Cohen, D. K. (1995). What is the system in systemic reform? Educational Researcher, 24(9), 11–31.
Cohen, D. K., & Mehta, J. D. (2017). Why reform sometimes succeeds: Understanding the conditions that produce reforms that last. American Educational Research Journal, 54(4), 644–690.
Creswell, J. W., & Clark, V. L. P. (2017). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
Cuban, L. (1990). Reforming again, again, and again. Educational Researcher, 19(1), 3–13.
Cuban, L. (2006). An international and historical perspective on national education reforms. In D. Inbar (Ed.), Towards educational revolution? (pp. 22–34). Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad. [in Hebrew].
Cuban, L., Kirkpatrick, H., & Peck, C. (2001). High access and low use of technologies in high school classrooms: Explaining an apparent paradox. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 813–834.
Dadon-Golan, Z., BenDavid-Hadar, I., & Klein, J. (2019). Equity in education: The Israeli case. International Journal of Educational Management, 33(7), 1670–1685.
Dror, Y. (2006). Past reforms in the Israeli education system: What history can teach us about the Dovrat report? In D. Inbar (Ed.), Towards educational revolution? (pp. 35–39). Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad. [in Hebrew].
Eisner, E. W. (1992). Educational reform and the ecology of schooling. Teachers College Record, 93(4), 610–627.
Eisner, E. W. (2000). Those who ignore the past…: 12 ‘easy’ lessons for the next millennium. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 32(2), 343–357.
Elmore, R. F. (1995). Structural reform and educational practice. Educational Researcher, 24(9), 23–26.
Fullan, M. (1992). Successful school improvement: The implementation perspective and beyond. London: McGraw-Hill Education.
Fullan, M. (2000). The return of large־scale reform. Journal of Educational Change, 1(1), 5–27.
Ganon-Shilon, S., & Schechter, C. (2019). Shared sense-making processes within a national reform implementation: Principals’ voices. Leadership and Policy in Schools. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1080/15700763.2019.1696370
Ganon-Shilon, S., Shaked, H., & Schechter, C. (2020). Principals’ voices pertaining to shared sense-making processes within a generally-outlined pedagogical reform implementation. International Journal of Leadership in Education. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1080/13603124.2020.1770864
Gassner, D., & Gofen, A. (2018). Street-level management: A clientele-agent perspective on implementation. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 28(4), 551–568.
Gaziel, H. H. (1994). Implementing reforms in a centralised education system: The case of Israeli education. Oxford Review of Education, 20(2), 237–252.
Gaziel, H. H. (2010). Why educational reforms fail: The emergence and failure of an educational reform: A case study from Israel. In J. Zajda (Ed.), Globalisation, ideology and education policy reforms (pp. 49–62). Dordrecht: Springer.
Gibton, D. (2003). Autonomy, anomie, integration and anarchy: Legislation and adjudication as devices for executing educational reforms and implementing educational policy. In Y. Dror, D. Nevo, & R. Shapira (Eds.), Turns and returns in Israeli education policy guidelines for the 2000s (pp. 407–454). Tel Aviv: Ramot. [In Hebrew].
Gofen, A. (2014). Mind the gap: Dimensions and influence of street־level divergence. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 24(2), 473–493.
Gofen, A., Sella, S., & Gassner, D. (2019). Levels of analysis in street-level bureaucracy research. In P. Hupe (Ed.), Research handbook on street-level bureaucracy (pp. 336–350). London: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Golafshani, N. (2003). Understanding reliability and validity in qualitative research. The Qualitative Report, 8(4), 597–606.
Goldspink, C. (2007). Rethinking educational reform: A loosely coupled and complex systems perspective. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 35(1), 27–50.
Gu, Q., Sammons, P., & Chen, J. (2018). How principals of successful schools enact education policy: Perceptions and accounts from senior and middle leaders. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 17(3), 373–390.
Hanberger, A. (2001). What is the policy problem? Methodological challenges in policy evaluation. Evaluation, 7(1), 45–62.
Hasson, N. (2015, April 30). Sixty percent increase in 4 years in Israeli matriculation exams in East Jerusalem. Haaretz. Retrieved from http://www.haaretz.co.il. [in Hebrew].
Helgøy, I., & Homme, A. (2006). Policy tools and institutional change: Comparing education policies in Norway, Sweden and England. Journal of Public Policy, 26(02), 141–165.
Hess, F. M. (2010). The same thing over and over. Cambrige, MA: Harvard University Press.
Howlett, M. (2009). Policy analytical capacity and evidence-based policy-making: Lessons from Canada. Canadian Public Administration, 52(2), 153–175.
Hupe, P., & Buffat, A. (2014). A public service gap: Capturing contexts in a comparative approach of street־level bureaucracy. Public Management Review, 16(4), 548–569.
Jann, W., & Wegrich, K. (2007). Theories of the policy cycle. In F. Fisher, G. J. Miller, & M. S. Sidney (Eds.), Handbook of public policy analysis (pp. 43–62). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
Katzir, S., & Perry-Hazan, L. (2019). Legitimizing public schooling and innovative education policies in strict religious communities: The story of the new Haredi public education stream in Israel. Journal of Education Policy, 34(2), 215–241.
Lascoumes, P., & Le Gales, P. (2007). Introduction: Understanding public policy through its instruments – From the nature of instruments to the sociology of public policy instrumentation. Governance, 20(1), 1–21.
Lingard, B. (2011). Policy as numbers: Ac/counting for educational research. The Australian Educational Researcher, 38(4), 355–382.
Lipsky, M. (2010). Street־level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public service (30th Ann. ed.). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Madaus, G. F., Scriven, M., & Stufflebeam, D. L. (Eds.). (2000). Evaluation models: Viewpoints on educational and human services evaluation. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Markman, N., & Yonah, Y. (2009). Nationalism, multiculturalism and core curriculum in Israel: Between inclusion and exclusion. Alpayim, 34, 65–81. [in Hebrew].
Matland, R. E. (1995). Synthesizing the implementation literature: The ambiguity-conflict model of policy implementation. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 5(2), 145–174.
McConnell, A. (2010). Policy success, policy failure and grey areas in-between. Journal of Public Policy, 30(3), 345–362.
McDonnell, L. M., & Elmore, R. F. (1987). Getting the job done: Alternative policy instruments. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 9(2), 133–152.
Mizrahi-Shtelman, R. (2019). Role identity and sensemaking as institutional mechanisms for policy translation: The case of school principals and education reforms in Israel. Leadership and Policy in Schools. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1080/15700763.2019.1638422
O’Leary, R. (2010). Guerrilla employees: Should managers nurture, tolerate, or terminate them? Public Administration Review, 70(1), 8–19.
Orton, J. D., & Weick, K. E. (1990). Loosely coupled systems: A reconceptualization. Academy of Management Review, 15(2), 203–223.
Patton, M. Q. (1987). How to use qualitative methods in evaluation. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
Perry-Hazan, L. (2015). Court-led educational reforms in political third rails: Lessons from the litigation over ultra-religious Jewish schools in Israel. Journal of Education Policy, 30(5), 713–746.
Pülzl, H., & Treib, O. (2007). Implementing public policy. In F. Fisher, G. J. Miller, & M. S. Sidney (Eds.), Handbook of public policy analysis. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
Reingold, R., & Avidov-Ungar, O. (2018). ‘There should be more cooperation in setting the policy’: Israeli stakeholders’ perceptions of their appropriate role in implementing a new educational reform. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 22(6), 731–748.
Resh, N., & Kfir, D. (2004). Educational integration in Israel: Thirty years of hesitant policy in view of changing ideology. Megamot, 43(1), 63–33. [in Hebrew].
Rom, N., & Eyal, O. (2019). Sensemaking, sense-breaking, sense-giving, and sense-taking: How educators construct meaning in complex policy environments. Teaching and Teacher Education, 78, 62–74.
Sadovnik, A. R. (2006). Qualitative research and public policy. In F. Fischer & G. J. Miller (Eds.), Handbook of public policy analysis: Theory, politics, and methods (pp. 417–427). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Sarason, S. B. (1982). The culture of the school and the problem of change. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Schechter, C., & Shaked, H. (2017). Leaving fingerprints: Principals’ considerations while implementing education reforms. Journal of Educational Administration, 55(3), 242–260.
Shaked, H., & Schechter, C. (2017). School principals as mediating agents in education reforms. School Leadership & Management, 37(1–2), 19–37.
Shavit, Y. (2013). Vocational / technological education on second thought. Jerusalem: Taub Center. [in Hebrew].
Shulock, N. (1999). The paradox of policy analysis: If it is not used, why do we produce so much of it? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 18(2), 226–244.
Sicron, M. (1986). Mass immigration- its dimensions, characteristics, and influence on the Israeli population structure. In M. Naor (Ed.), Immigrants and transit camps (pp. 1948–1952). Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi. [in Hebrew].
Slakmon, B. (2017). Educational technology policy in Israel. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 25(1), 137–149.
Spillane, J. P., Reiser, B. J., & Reimer, T. (2002). Policy implementation and cognition: Reframing and refocusing implementation research. Review of Educational Research, 72(3), 387–431.
Swirski, S., & Dagan-Buzaglo, N. (2009). Differentiation, inequality and loose control. Tel Aviv: Adva Center. [in Hebrew].
Tummers, L. (2013). Policy alienation and the power of professionals: Confronting new policies. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Tzameret, Z. (2005). Zalman Arran and the ‘productivization’ of the Oriental Jews. In A. Barley, D. Gutwein, & T. Friling (Eds.), Society and economics in Israel: A historical and contemporary view (pp. 326–295). Jerusalem and Kiryat Sde-Boker: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and the Ben Gurion Institute for Israel Studies. [in Hebrew].
Vedung, E. (2017). Public policy and program evaluation. New York, NY: Routledge.
Vurgan, Y. (2007). The education system in the Jewish ultra-Orthodox sector – Situation report. Jerusalem: The Israeli Parliament. [in Hebrew].
Vurgan, Y. (2010a). Computers in schools – Situation report. Jerusalem: The Israeli Parliament.
Vurgan, Y. (2010b). Claims about ethnic discrimination in admission to the recognized unofficial educational institutions. Jerusalem: The Israeli Parliament. [in Hebrew].
Ward, S. C., Bagley, C., Lumby, J., Hamilton, T., Woods, P., & Roberts, A. (2016). What is ‘policy’ and what is ‘policy response’? An illustrative study of the implementation of the leadership standards for social justice in Scotland. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 44(1), 43–56.
Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21, 1–19.
Weissblei, E. (2012). Core studies in the Jewish ultra-Orthodox educational system. Jerusalem: The Israeli Parliament.
Weissblei, E. (2013). Israeli education system- Major issues discussed by the Education, Culture and Sport Committe. Jerusalem: The Israeli Parliament. [in Hebrew].
Yang, K. (2006). Quantitative methods for policy analysis. In F. Fischer & G. J. Miller (Eds.), Handbook of public policy analysis: Theory, politics, and methods (pp. 349–368). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Yanow, D. (2006). Qualitative-interpretive methods in policy research. In F. Fischer & G. J. Miller (Eds.), Handbook of public policy analysis: Theory, politics, and methods (pp. 405–415). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Yonah, Y., & Shenhav, Y. (2005). What is multiculturalism? The politics of difference in Israel. Tel Aviv: Babel. [in Hebrew].
Zohar, A. (2013). Grades aren’t everything: Revamping pedagogic discourse. Tel Aviv: Hapoalim. [in Hebrew].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Berkovich, I. (2021). The Policy Process: Implementation of Education Policy. In: Education Policy, Theories, and Trends in the 21st Century. Policy Implications of Research in Education, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63103-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63103-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-63102-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-63103-1
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)