From Policy to Impact: A State Education Agency's Guide to Implementation

Abstract

State governments enact hundreds of policies a year intended to improve outcomes for students. If these policies were self-executing, the impact on American education would be swift and dramatic, and the system today would look profoundly different than it did just one year ago. But the reality is that how a policy is implemented often affects student outcomes as much (or more) than the policy itself. Much of this policy implementation is led or influenced by state education agencies (SEAs), which historically held regulatory and compliance-oriented roles. Today, however, state legislatures and federal policies increasingly expect SEAs to take more proactive roles in policy implementation, and some SEAs are embracing this change. This report offers a new framework to help SEA leaders and staff think about the many facets of implementation. It describes two complementary types of elements: sequential phases of work and continuous activities that flow across those phases. By focusing on the continuous activities, SEAs can strengthen each phase of work and ultimately improve a policy's effectiveness.