4 Components of Effective Education Policy

Effectively developed and implemented education policy has the ability to shape the future for thousands of students. 

Casey Sullivan Taylor, policy director for early literacy for ExcelinEd, and a former reading teacher, interventionist, and literacy coach, joined Season 4, Episode 1, of All For Literacy to discuss the importance and implementation of education policy. 

Taylor emphasized several important facets of policy that work together to create change across a state, region, or country that ultimately support student success. Effective education policy isn’t just about the policy itself, it’s about several components including initial implementation, ongoing assessment, the overarching vision, and how the individual characteristics of a state come into play.

The more educators, parents, policymakers, and other stakeholders understand these key components of effective policy, the more likely students will be to reap its benefits.

Policy is just 1 part of process

While the actual policy may seem like the most important part of driving educational change, it is actually only one part of the journey. Policy creation is one step of the broader cycle of creating change, and similarly, it’s not always the first step either. 

When Taylor worked for the North Carolina Department of Education, several steps needed to happen before a new policy could even be created. “There were [first] changes in the structure and in the advancement, and then that eventually led to policy changes,” she explains about the status of the department after Catherine Truitt took office as the state superintendent of public instruction. 

Once a new policy is created, it kicks off the next phase of the cycle—implementation. That’s what happened for Taylor and her team next: “And when the policy was completely overhauled and revamped in 2021, it gave us the foundation that we needed to move the work forward at a stronger pace and with more buy-in quite honestly,” she says. 

Overall, policy creation is one component of the greater strategy to increase student literacy rates. 

It’s an ongoing process

Another aspect of policy change Taylor emphasized is that each part of the cycle is an ongoing process requiring continual assessment and improvement over time. This was especially apparent to Taylor during her time with the Mississippi Department of Education.

For example, many people have described the positive educational change in the state as the Mississippi Miracle, but Taylor has a different way of describing it. “Those of us who have been a part of the work really like to call it the Mississippi Marathon,” she says, adding, “My former colleagues and those who have come since I've left, they are still striving continuously to grow and to make changes and continue that improvement and ensure that every child has the opportunity to be a strong reader.”

For Taylor, “Continuous learning and improvement are critical.” Her team members in Mississippi constantly assessed where they were, where they were going, what they had done well, and what they could improve. They would often make use of SWOT analyses—studying current Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to understand what could be done to improve their current situation. 

All For Literacy guest Julie Washington further drove this point home with her discussion about scientific revolutions during Season 3, Episode 1. “That's part of the process in science that the people who are holding onto the old idea and the people who have the new idea do not agree, and it creates conflict,” Washington says. “And eventually the conflict is resolved and the paradigm shift happens.” The same process of improvement occurs as policy is continually evaluated and fine-tuned. 

Part of striving for excellence across the board is understanding the process is ongoing and requires constant assessment and adjustment. 

A well-communicated vision

“A well-communicated vision is key to any important work that we do,” Taylor says about her time working in education policy. Her time at the Mississippi and North Carolina departments of education cemented this point. When leaders explain a vision well, it’s easier to create change moving forward. “When you have all of those different stakeholders buy into that vision and then they're all striving to move in the same direction, it makes all the difference,” Taylor says. 

She explains that state and district administrators who lack this strong vision and the leadership to support and communicate it can often find themselves struggling with implementation and ultimately with driving change. This lack of vision and leadership can lead to issues with both policy development and subsequent implementation.

When a vision is well-designed and communicated, it becomes easier to get each individual team and component to work together and move in the same direction, leading to less friction and fewer upstream battles along the way.  

State characteristics come into play  

During her work in Mississippi and North Carolina, Taylor realized even though policy, implementation, and adjustment may look different between states, there are multiple paths to progress. And these paths can often be influenced by the geographical and population size of a state. 

For example, North Carolina has a much larger student population than Mississippi and covers a much larger geographic area of the country. Thus, Taylor and her team in North Carolina were faced with several challenges when implementing policy that she did not encounter during her time in Mississippi. 

Her team found that a decentralized effort worked best with North Carolina’s unique characteristics—a tactic that may not have worked as well in Mississippi. The state had regional consultants for different initiatives of the department including early literacy and literacy. “[It] proved to be really critical to be able to have a presence in the different regions across the state and someone who was on the ground and could communicate, but also had the connection back to the department,” Taylor explains. 

So, while Taylor took some lessons from Mississippi and applied them to her work in North Carolina, each state required a different approach to implementation, assessment, and adjustment. 

Vision, Implementation, Assessment, Adjustment

While effective policy has the ability to positively affect the educational journey of vast numbers of students, it’s important to take into account not only the policy itself but also vision, implementation, assessment, and adjustment. And perhaps most importantly, each of these facets should be adjusted by location to most effectively drive change. 

Learn more about the state of education policy by tuning into All For Literacy, Season 4, Episode 1, with Casey Sullivan Taylor, and subscribe to the podcast to stay up-to-date with key industry topics, news, and debates.