Summary And New Directions For Education Policy

The process of educational policy moves in a constrained, iterative fashion. It is an interactive process vertically and one that requires intersectoral cooperation. For the education bureaucracy, symbolic action is clearly the easiest to provide. For many other issues, a piecemeal incrementalist approach that delegates much responsibility to local levels must do. The management of teachers' housing problems and the establishment of teacher-preparation curricula are examples of this. In the most important cases, however, these strategies have proven insufficient. To raise teachers' salaries, as we saw, the SEdC had to wait for the right moment in terms of fiscal resources and national agendas. At that point, with an open policy window, the symbolism, public concern, and submerged professional protests worked together to thrust forward the issue of teachers' wages. Even with this, only partial success was possible.

Consensus building, negotiation, and persuasion are central features of much of the education policy process, yet they take different forms, depending on whether bureaucratic interaction occurs within the education system or across sectors. The vertical connections within the system are such that teacher policy is negotiated and defined through a process of local-Center interaction and mutual adaptation. Connections to national agendas or other education reforms speed the process of policy implementation locally. At the same time, local experimentation, interpretation, and contradictions eventually shape the SEdC's view of appropriate practice.

If the loose coupling within the education bureaucracy gives a distinctive cast and pace to educational change, cross-sector negotiation represents horizontal connections and characterizes the formation of major education policies. Because it is not a productive, income-generating ministry, the SEdC has to turn elsewhere for resources. In general, the

education bureaucracy has little to bring to the negotiating table. It must forge alliances with more powerful actors. The case of teacher salaries suggests that there are some forms of persuasion available to education, though they are slow to be expressed. While the education bureaucracy had little clout with which to influence other ministries, unorganized but persistent signs of a grass-roots boycott (through teacher attrition and the withholding of their labor) may have lent persuasive pressure to the discussion of teachers' wages.

The teacher policy case suggests several ways that the education bureaucracy copes. In the past, this bureaucracy has relied heavily on symbolic action. This is dangerous, inasmuch as people will only accept symbols for a finite period. One new strategy, however, focuses on education itself as a valuable commodity. In today's negotiations the resource that education can call on is the service it provides. In the late 1980s the Party's emphasis on scientific and technological development added to education's prestige, and changes in the bureaucracy and society began to create a credential market with tighter links between education and the labor market. As a result, at the level of the individual consumer (the student or parent), education has come to be seen as a form of investment in human capital. For the present, education, though still a weak bureaucratic actor, is enjoying a favorable moment.

An important consequence of education's new exchange value is the recent trend of the educational bureaucracy and its institutions to highlight and rely on economic activity. It is likely that current patterns we observe today will continue in ways that strengthen ties between educational institutions and enterprises.^[32] With little inherent financial clout or productive capacity, the education bureaucracy can now gain some internal leverage through lucrative arrangements with factories and enterprises. For educational institutions this has become a significant way to augment state support and offers one avenue for local solutions to policy problems (like teachers' welfare). Education institutions such as schools or local (or provincial) education authorities can bargain with other (noneducation) units for exchanges that benefit their own constituencies and organizational interests; training can be offered in exchange for fees, goods, or services. Within the education system the resources that these cross-sector negotiations make possible alter the landscape in varied ways and reshape the traditional divisions of power. Already it is clear that some local units benefit from these bargaining possibilities more than others (since they are able to strike bargains their counterparts cannot), and some local units therefore now can be less reliant on or more persuasive with superordi-

nate bureaucratic organizations than they had been previously. The basic entrepreneurial principles underlying these new strategies in cross-sector work have been endorsed by the SEdC (ZGJYB , 4 August 1987, 1). At the same time, education institutions have been warned against becoming an "economic center" (jingji zhongxin ) by chasing after funds.^[33]

It is this tension between looking for sources of power and staying within acceptable boundaries that characterizes much of the education bureaucracy's behavior. Anthony Downs talks about the crucial influence of the "power setting" (1967, 44). The case of education reveals the powerful role of the Party in delineating the boundaries of the acceptable. Education's relative position is greatly influenced by the Party agenda. The SEdC does not have autonomy in setting the direction of education policy but reflects instead broad goals outlined by the Party. In the late 1980s the education sector had greater autonomy, allowed for wider experimentation, relied more on expertise, and encouraged greater fiscal independence than previously. Yet these developments were only made possible by Party-approved policies. While the case studies demonstrate an interactive process of policy change, the education bureaucracy remains a vulnerable actor in a complex political landscape. Given the power of the framework surrounding the policy process, education therefore remains weak in ways that force it, both horizontally and vertically, to be responsive, flexible, and active in forging compromises.