The Silent Stakeholders: Why Educational Policy Often Misses the Mark?

https://www.reddit.com/r/education/comments/1j7d4nb/the_silent_stakeholders_why_educational_policy/

created by psych4you on 09/03/2025 at 17:48 UTC

0 upvotes, 6 top-level comments (showing 6)

It strikes me how often educational policies are developed and implemented without truly considering the diverse needs of everyone involved. We talk about 'stakeholders' – students, families, teachers, administrators, the public, and even the private sector – but are their voices actually being heard?

How can we improve communication between policy makers and the people that those policies effect?

Let's discuss how we can bridge this gap and ensure that educational policies truly serve the needs of all stakeholders.

Comments

Comment by ICLazeru at 09/03/2025 at 17:59 UTC

9 upvotes, 0 direct replies

My district tried to reach out to local businesses and ask what they needed. We ended up adding a construction elective as a result, but then we got ghosted. We don't know if it's good or bad or anything.

Comment by StopblamingTeachers at 10/03/2025 at 01:50 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Every school on the planet is the same. The community has been irrelevant since the internet.

Comment by fruppi at 09/03/2025 at 20:49 UTC

5 upvotes, 0 direct replies

In my state, the best approach would be for legislators to actually listen to teachers. We're in frequent communication with all the other stakeholders, but our legislators totally ignore us. If we're lucky, they give us lip service then turn around and vote along party lines.

Comment by Snow_Water_235 at 10/03/2025 at 04:20 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

We don't need to hear the private sector voices because they are hypocritical. I saw a statement (quite a few years ago) by Apple arguing that they need schools to do better because they need more engineers and such. Meanwhile, Apple declares most of its profits in Ireland to avoid US taxes. It's like Apple isn't aware that schools run on taxes.

Comment by MonoBlancoATX at 10/03/2025 at 14:08 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Let's discuss how we can bridge this gap and ensure that educational policies truly serve the needs of all stakeholders.

Can you share some examples of this "gap"? and to be clear, I'm not talking about students or families being ignored in the policy making process, I'm talking about concrete examples that show "stakeholders" in education either being ignored or being completely disregarded? and taking it a step further, why is that necessarily a bad thing?

Also, why should education serve the needs of ALL stakeholders? is it not usually the case that different groups of stakeholders have contradictory needs? private sector wants profits, but that does nothing to benefit students or families, for example.

Honestly, if you want to improve communication with policy makers, you need to focus on getting lobbyists out of the the legislative process entirely. They're one of the biggest groups ruining education over the past 30+ years.