Past-term policies: When policies fail to address future contexts

An important aspect of educational policy making is the timespan that policies are expected to address. In general, there is an assumption that policies are directed toward the future and are expected to function as pathways going forward in time. I suggest that this is not always the case – that there are certain types of policies that, although they are intended to affect future action, they are essentially backward-looking and, thus, do not suggest any meaningful vision for future contexts. I call these types of policies “past-term policies”.

In their seminal work on policy foresight, Irvine & Martin (1984) categorize policies in terms of their timespan as:
– Short-term: The next 1-2 years.
– Medium-term: Approximately the next 5 years.
– Long-term: The next 10 years or more.

The timespans assigned to the different types of policies relate to the anticipated time that it takes to realize an articulated vision for change. Policies may correspond to the different categories out of necessity, i.e. change needs to be realized within a certain timespan, or that there is simply a desire to map out the pathway to a vision within a certain timespan. Whatever the situation, policies that are effectively classified according to this categorization are anticipatory in that they describe an expected outcome and the steps to be taken within the relevant timespan to realize the expected outcome.

In contrast to forward looking policies, the defining characteristics of past-term policies are that they are reactive and take past events as their sole point of reference. Past-term policies often come about as a proposed quick fix to a perceived problem following little, if any, analysis of the issue, and, therefore, tend to be narrow and dogmatic. Furthermore, past-term policies do not articulate any meaningful vision for the future other than a simple reversal of the perceived problem. Because of the limited utility of past-term policies and the lack of understanding of the issues that they are meant to address, they are often challenged and easily overturned.

A recent example of a past-term policy is the State of Missouri’s legislation, passed in the summer of 2011, that prohibited teachers from interacting with students using social media. The justification for the legislation was based on a single past incident where a teacher’s online relationship with a student led to a case of sexual abuse (the law was blocked by a judge on 08/26).

(A revised version of the “Facebook” law is now going through the Missouri legislature.)