Making our ideas count: Five ways to bring educators’ voices to the policy table

Nearly everyone acknowledges that teachers and other education professionals know the education system better than any other group; so why is it so difficult in practice for these professionals to have an impact on policy? Why do well-intentioned proposals and ideas fail to gain traction among those who make the important decisions that impact schools, colleges, and universities? There is no shortage of ideas for how to improve things, but few of these ideas ever translate to policy.

Addressing the idea/policy gap was the focus of a recent visit to Concordia by David R. Garcia, author of Teach Truth to Power (MIT Press, 2021), former Democratic candidate for Governor of Arizona, and current professor of education at Arizona State University. We want to share five key recommendations for influencing policy that emerged from these discussions as we embark on a new school year and interest in public education renews itself.

1. Start with a practical problem

Politicians and educational policy makers in government and institutions deal with system-wide practical problems: real world conditions that cost time, money or opportunity for all whom the systems serve. By contrast, front-line education professionals often focus on immediate issues affecting their classrooms. These types of problems overlap but are not the same. Keep this difference in mind and start with a system-wide practical problem—something that costs time, money, or opportunity that affects the constituencies they serve—to make clear to politicians and institutional policy makers why they should listen to your proposal and how it will improve the lived conditions of their constituents.

2. Tell policymakers what will happen next

Often, those who want to influence policy consider their role to be providing information. This approach, however, limits their ability to make their ideas count. The most valuable information to policymakers is insight on what will happen next because of their decisions: in other words, details of the likely positive impact of the proposed policy. Teachers are often well placed to provide such predictions. But much like academics, they often hesitate to do this. Even if the forecasts are modest, once policymakers realize that a person or group has the power to anticipate outcomes, they will become substantially more interesting and credible to them

3. Become familiar with the relevant policy-making processes

Policy making processes differ among the different levels of education as well as in different jurisdictions. For example, school curricula are established by provinces while more operationally focused policies are often made by school boards. Who plays a role in different policy decisions also varies, with some governed by the provincial legislatures, others by ministries of education, others by school boards, and others within institutions. Rather than make assumptions about the policy-making authority of an individual, verify it to make sure you’re contacting someone who actually plays a role in establishing policy. Or put more directly, avoid finding yourself at the school board office when you should have gone to the provincial Ministry of Education or legislature.

4. Meet the decision makers and influencers where they are

Education professionals recognize differences between their specialized expertise and that of politicians and other policymakers. What they do not always recognize is that the goal should not be to bring policymakers fully up to speed on the detailed complexities of a given problem. That is an exercise in frustration, and in any case, expert-level knowledge is not necessary for policymakers do their work. Rather, education professionals should meet policymakers where they are on issues. On a practical level, this means using easy-to-grasp frameworks to communicate concepts and skipping discussion of the intricacies of practice or exactly how the system works.

This also involves finding out about the educational experiences of the politician or policy maker whom you are trying to convince. For example, what was this person’s own primary, secondary, and higher education experience? How similar or different is that to the institutions whose policies they oversee? Do they have children who are currently or previously went through the system? How did their parental experiences influence their views? And what is the politician’s or policy makers’ own perception of the situation affected by the policy proposals?

Most importantly, education professionals should spotlight stories in their discussions to illustrate the human impact of their policy proposals. Why stories? Politicians and other policymakers will likely not remember the ins and outs of a policy proposal. But they are more likely to remember a compelling story that encapsulates the major point of a proposal and retell it to others.

5. Always end with an “ask”

Policy does not change in one fell swoop and education professionals should resist the trap of trying to make lasting improvements through one ‘amazing’ session with a legislator or one well-received presentation to a group. Rather, policy change happens through numerous small “asks” of politicians and policy makers, which accumulate and gain momentum over time.

So when presenting their proposals and the underlying research, education professionals should end their interactions with politicians and policy makers with an “ask.” The “ask” does not have to be grand but should be a specific, yes-or-no request. Here are a few examples:

Will you introduce me to someone else with whom I can discuss my work?

Will you attend a meeting or visit my school or program?

Will you take my proposal to a specific someone? 

Applying these suggestions

As aspiring change-makers ourselves, we often think that our great ideas will simply ‘creep’ into the policymaking on their own merits. Our ideas are well-informed and connected to practice—who wouldn’t want to adopt them? But research on policymaking shows that this diffusion model doesn’t work. Ideas don’t move through the world by themselves. They need to be moved by people. Lobbyists, whose job it is to influence policy, clearly understand this, even if we education professionals don’t.

For an example of how education professionals could strengthen their approach in policy making, we need look no further than our own departmental efforts at here at Concordia. We were proud of our response to the Quebec government’s Bill 21, a bill that (among other things) bans teacher education students from wearing religious symbols in their student teaching and later teaching careers. We had several meetings to coordinate our actions, we released a carefully considered public statement explaining our opposition to the bill, and we took several other coordinated actions. We thought we had done a good job of trying to make an impact.

But when we asked David Garcia to look at our efforts during his visit, we had a rude awakening. He completely revised our statement, making it much more appealing and readable. For example, we had started with a summary of our position:

“We affirm our total opposition to Bill 21.”

Garcia’s suggested alternate version of the statement began with a specific practical problem:

“Bill 21 will drive good people away from the classroom.”

Our version began with a condemnation (which is unlikely to win supporters among legislators who voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Bill) in addition to being too wordy. By contrast, Garcia’s version began with a problem statement—a problem that was of high concern to a government facing a shortage of qualified teachers (about 25% of all teachers lack brevets or licenses). His version was also easy to read and separated each claim with a bolded section, making it easier to read.

Garcia also noted that we loaded up our statement with quotes from the Charter of Rights and the Quebec curriculum. By contrast, he replaced these with a relatable quote:

“You don’t need to strip people of their religious symbols to get them to be good teachers.”

His revisions were humbling; the showed us how we could have made our statement much more effective.

If we want to influence policy as education professionals, we need to take a hard look at our own strategies for doing so and, as Garcia showed our department, focus our work on influencing decision makers in terms that are convincing and respectful to them, not merely making our point. We acknowledge that the five strategies we listed above are not always easy to adopt.  But making policy proposals that lead to change requires the hard work of connecting with politicians and other policymakers, working to address social challenges as they understand them, and leveraging our expertise to bring useful, trustworthy proposals to the table.