An Expanded Impact Framework for Policy Impact Analysis

• In Event: Global Education Reforms: Discursive Trends and Policy Impact, 1960-2020

Proposal

Education reforms are often criticized for being inefficient and repetitive. However, while it is true that many reforms fall short of being concrete and feasible, traditional models of policy analysis tend to assess impact from a unidirectional perspective, as if the significance of a given reform could be measured only by its ability to attain the specific policy outcomes it initially intended to achieve. To account for this gap in the literature, this paper proposes an expanded impact model of policy analysis. According to this model, the aggregation of reforms of a similar nature adopted around a certain period can generate policy outcomes which isolated reforms would not be able to attain on their own. Drawing on data from the World Education Reform Database (WERD), I analyze the role of the adoption of accountability reforms on educational outcomes between 1960 and 2019 through three sets of panel regression models including country fixed effects. I find no relationship between the adoption of accountability reforms and improvements in student performance, as measured by standardized tests. However, the adoption of accountability reforms is associated with an increase in both the percentage of students progressing from primary to secondary education and the percentage of GDP allocated to education expenditures. These findings suggest that reforms are not mere acts of window dressing but, indeed, have a non-negligible effect on education systems. While the adoption of accountability reforms does not necessarily lead directly to more quality of education, they signal a national commitment to improving education systems.

Author

• Heitor Santos, Stanford University