Policymaking
Policymaking is the practice of creating principles and proposals that are used as a basis for decision-making by an institution, entity, or government agency (Anderson, 2011).
Policymaking is typically used as a compass to lead various entities in making present and prospective decisions. Policymakers are senior members of an organization who do analysis by consulting and gathering knowledge and synthesizing the information into a series of proposals. The collection of ideas is intended to produce an outcome or improvement (Gerston, 2004).
As a result, this paper will look at the various phases of decision-making, anxiety in policymaking, and measures towards improving policy. Also, the paper shall examine the policy of why students should or should not pass competency tests.
Policy Making Process
In policy making, there are different stages that policy makers must consider to ensure that they formulate policies that achieve desirable change. The first stage is the agenda setting and involves discussion among the policy makers to adopt issues arising in an agency as a policy problem (Gerston, 2004).
Agenda setting is the stage where issues in an agency miss or gain the attention of policymakers. However, policy makers cannot address each and every problem arising in their jurisdiction; therefore, they must prioritize the needs. The prioritization of needs is a major problem arising in agenda setting because there might be a case of misplaced priorities.
The second phase of policy making is the policy formulation stage. The process involves examining the problem identified in the agenda-setting phase. The policy makers examine the problems by considering the alternative mechanism of solving the problem (Anderson, 2011).
After examining the various routes towards solving the problem, policymakers come up with the most efficient approach. However, glitches arise in this process whereby policymakers choose the alternative that will solve the issue in the shortest time possible, instead of focusing on the most effective alternative.
The third phase is the policy implementation. Unlike the first stages, the policy implementation stage is carried out by institutions and agencies but not the policymakers. The policy makers communicate the policy clearly to the relevant agency through the designated channels. After communication, the agency provides resources required to enact the formulated solution. The implementation stage is crucial, and any ambiguity in the communication might lead to ineffective implementations (Gerston, 2004).
The final stage is the policy evaluation. This phase involves probing how the policy is working. The workability of a policy is evaluated through feedback from the people it is affecting directly. On the hand, agencies and institutions can engage in scientific research to evaluate the effectiveness of the policy. However, this phase has a lot of challenges because if the relevant agencies depend on information from the target audience, the information might be biased. On the other hand, scientific research is very expensive, and it requires a lot of resources (Anderson, 2011).
Policy Change
Policy change refers to change or shift in the existing policies to new policies. Policy changes involve major changes in attitudes, principles, and decision of a certain agency (Lovinfosse, 2008).
People in these agencies adapt to the existing environment, and it is, therefore, difficult to effect policy changes smoothly. As a result, many agencies are reluctant in changing existing policies and programs. The following are the reasons why agencies avoid policy change:
Firstly, the cost of policy change and reversal is very high. Policy change entails coordination between the policy makers and the target audience. The coordination costs money in the form of due to the research involved. Also, it comes with other psychological costs, such as morale during the adjustment phase.
Secondly, companies are anxious to change policies because they are commonly molded to resist change. The resistance is characterized by different parties in the agencies protecting the current policies. Therefore, policy makers can only wait for a critical moment when there is unanimous agreement that policy change is needed. However, in case an agency wants to change a policy, it must undergo the following steps:
Firstly, the agency head with the help of other policymakers must identify the problems related to the existing policy. In this phase, the agency must keep contact with different stakeholders in the agency to ensure that they own the problem (Vaughan & Arsneault, 2014). Notably, engaging the various neutral parties and trying to bring them on board is vital. The agency head must also request support from all the players in the jurisdiction to ensure successful policy change.
Secondly, the policy makers must draft the new policy that is formulated with the help of all the players. The policy draft must be clear and contain all the elements of the problems established in the first stage (Vaughan & Arsneault, 2014). Additionally, the policy makers should avail the drafted policy to the relevant heads of the agency and explain why they should support the new policy. The next step involves engaging other heads on different ways to implement the plan. The involvement assists in establishing a time frame for the implementing policy change. Finally, evaluating the progress of policy comes as the last stage. Effective evaluation entails collecting positive feedback from different stakeholders and publicizing it to the whole agency to bring more people on board.
Competency Tests
Competency tests are exit tests administered in high school to ensure that students get their high school diploma. Students who fail the test are supposed to prepare for a retake (Erlandson, 2013).
The issue of competency test has raised contentious debate, especially in regards to their effectiveness. The people against the competency tests raise solid arguments showing that they should not be the overall gauge, for students to get a diploma. The following are the reasons as to why students should not pass the competency test to graduate;
For a high school student to graduate with a diploma, evaluation should be progressive in such a way that every year results in high school contribute to the diploma. The evaluation should also cover other areas such as group work. Effective evaluation cannot test everything a student has learned in the entire course of high school using one test. Therefore, students do not have to pass the competency test to show that they are intelligent, but there should be other forms of evaluations to show that they had gainful learning in school. Moreover, passing in mathematics and other subjects is not directly proportional to a successful life in college (Erlandson, 2013).
Also, some students might have knowledge, but they cannot express it using a single test while others are good at taking tests. Therefore, if a test is offered to gauge both students, then those who cannot express their knowledge in the tests become disadvantaged. Moreover, graduation tests cause students, especially those who are learning English as their second language, to drop out of school. Therefore, the system whereby one has to pass the competency tests to graduate should be abolished.
The other advantage of a non-competency test form of high school education is that states will channel their funds in a curriculum that is aimed at adding value to students (Madaus, 2014). The competency tests are associated with a costly curriculum that only teaches students how to pass the exams. Moreover, it is costly because it makes teachers spend more time with struggling students to ensure that they pass their exams instead of focusing on other areas they could perform better.
However, the disadvantage of not having to pass a competency test is that the state cannot warrant that all students get the same education. The states will not have a platform to evaluate how different districts are faring in education. To avoid that disadvantage, different stakeholders in the states should formulate a continuous evaluation system that evaluates different skills such as life skills, critical thinking, reading and writing, mathematics plus other areas in academics (Madaus, 2014).
Conclusion
As demonstrated by the essay, policy making is a process that follows critical stages to ensure that a policy achieves desirable change. The various stages demand engagement of different stakeholders and must be followed to ensure policy is accepted by the target population. Some problems arise in policy making process including the ambiguity in communicating the desired policy to the relevant agencies. On the other hand, the essay has also examined the concept of policy change and the reasons as to why agencies are reluctant to implement change. For instance, agencies refuse to change their policies because of the way they are molded to resist change. Lastly, the policy of competency testing has been examined, and the paper has outlined why competency tests are not good at gauging students.
References
Anderson, J. E. (2011). Public policymaking: An introduction. Boston, MA: Cengage.
Erlandson, D. A. (2013). Measurement and Evaluation. Routledge.
Gerston, L. N. (2004). Public policy making: Process and principles. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Lovinfosse, I. (2008). How and why do policies change?: A comparison of renewable electricity policies in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. New York: P.I.E. Peter Lang
Madaus, G. F. (2014). Courts, validity, and minimum competency testing. Place of publication not identified: Springer.
Vaughan, S. K., & Arsneault, S. (2014). Managing nonprofit organizations in a policy world.
