Educational Change by Commission: Attempting “Trickle Down” Reform

Abstract

The national commission has proven to be a venerable and persistent source of reform ideas for American education. Nearly 100 years old, the national commission has become especially popular in the 1980s. In a generic configuration, it uses the elements of the expert panel and information analysis (if not controlled research), and produces a report that includes recommendations for change as a formula for dealing with whatever inadequacies are felt to encumber elementary and/or secondary schools. Despite their popularity, little systematic analysis of the processes and procedures of national commissions has been reported, and even less frequently are concepts from political science and policy analysis enlisted to help understand the phenomenon. This article responds to these inadequacies in two ways: (a) it reviews national commission reports published since the early 1890s and finds four elements of commonality in them—their longevity as an activity, the general nature of their recommendations, their lack of attention to implementation, and the limited direct impact they have had on schools and classrooms; and (b) it compares two competing explanations of the commission processes’ popularity—a rational, prescriptive approach and a symbols-and-ceremony depiction. Finally, a composite sociopolitical thesis is advanced, based on the economic image of “trickle down.”