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The Impact of State Policies and Actions on Local Implementation Efforts: A Study of Whole School Reform in New Jersey

Department of Educational Leadership, Management and Policy at Seton Hall University

This article integrates the technical model of policy implementation with a coconstructed perspective of implementation to understand the impact of the New Jersey Department of Education’s (NJDOE) actions and policies on implementation of a set of court-ordered mandates in 30 of the state’s poorest school districts (referred to as the Abbott or special needs districts). The analysis reveals that the organizational responses of the NJDOE subverted the goals of the reforms. At the same time, local districts have interpreted and responded to the reforms in ways that are consonant with their own experiences and understandings. The article concludes with the observation that the ambient political environment in which the NJDOE operates places it in a conflictual relationship with not only the local districts but with the state’s Supreme Court, which is the progenitor of the reforms.

Key Words: state policies • top-down reform • models of implementation

Educational Policy, Vol. 18, No. 2, 338-363 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0895904803262146


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