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That’s an interesting question and it’s a question I often pose to students. I used
to teach courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and talking about well, how does
policy get translated into action that makes a difference in a child’s life. I remember
when my son was in high school and I was working on the reform agenda in the early 90s and
he would say to me periodically, “Dad, you know, I see in the newspaper, I hear all these
important policy conversations going on, but when are you actually going to do something
that has an impact on me in my classroom? When I am going to actually see something
here?” That’s a challenge and I think that’s a sobering thought for those of us
in the policy community because what we’re trying to do is to translate good intentions
and good ideas through the policy process into action that makes a difference in the
lives of children. For example, we look at experiments like charter schools, freeing
schools from a lot of the constraints within the existing school system and we hope by
setting them up in a parallel way it will create new learning opportunities for children.
We look at early childhood education and we see we need to do much more with children
in the early years. Neurologists tell us this, educators tell us this, families tell us this.
That’s a huge investment that makes the difference. We look at this question of time
that I just mentioned in providing extended learning time and we’re doing an experiment
with that, If we can prove that it makes a difference in students’ learning, then we
sort of replicate and scale that up so that it has an impact on all students. If we’re
awarding students financial aid or expanding our university system there are a variety
of ways. So almost everything that we do day in and day out, eventually translates down
through the line, but the business of crafting policy and then moving it through the policy
process which is a political process and then getting it translated into implementation
which is just the policy process by a different name and then down in a practical way so that
educators on the ground can implement it and make a difference in the lives of children.
That’s our work, that’s why we’re here and that’s how we should measure our success.