Creating New Governance Structures
(Fall 1994 Networkshop)
Summary and Conclusion
The Winter 1993 Networkshop, Creating New Governance Structures, revealed fundamental contrasts in how states design and implement system reform to improve service delivery for children and families. For example, populations being served range from the most disadvantaged families (Texas' ASCEND) to all families who live in a targeted "community at risk," regardless of income status or need (Colorado's Family Centers). The initiating force may be singular (e.g., the executive office initiative that created Colorado's Family Centers) or a joint effort (e.g., the combination of judicial order and legislative mandate that created Kentucky's Family Resource and Youth Services Centers, the public-private partnership that established California's Healthy Start). The degree of agency restructuring varies from minimal (Colorado's focus on collaborative decisionmaking among existing agencies), to the extreme (the abolition and rebuilding of Kentucky's Department of Education), to places in-between (Texas' creation of a Health and Human Services Commission to guide interagency planning and budgeting coordination).
Diversity in how states structure their initiatives demonstrates that context sensitivity is an inevitable feature of system reform. However, striking similarities remain among the questions that policymakers pose as they struggle to design those structures. At the conclusion of the Networkshop, participants raised some of these questions, or "burning issues," during roundtable discussions with presenters (see p. 19). The answers to such questions--one by one--may bring into focus how the essential elements of governance can interact in new ways to enable states to better serve their children and families.
It's not just linking up with agencies. What it really comes down to is helping to identify what the informal leadership is. I don't care how impoverished a community is‹how disadvantaged, how dysfunctional‹there are always individuals within that community that keep it together. We have got to identify them, give them the opportunity and the skills to work with their neighbors. That's really the key.
-Joe Borgo, Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services
| Writer: | Sharon Pelphrey |
| Editor: | Sue E. Mutchler |
| Graphic Design: | Lori Womack |
| Reviewers: | Lois Adams-Rodgers, Kentucky State Department of Education Judith Chynoweth, Foundation Consortium for School-Linked Services Rachel Lodge, Healthy Start Field Office Bryan Sperry, Executive Director, Children's Hospital Association Tom Willis, Kentucky Legislative Research Commission |
Network is a regular publication for SEDL's Regional Policy Analysts' & Advisors' Network, which includes executive and legislative analysts and key state education decisionmakers. The purpose of this publication from SEDL's State Policy Planning Service (SPPS) is to report on regional Networkshop meetings and to help Network members stay in touch between Networkshop meetings. Each issue features highlights of Networkshop meetings, findings from relevant research studies or promising practices, comparative information among states, or contact persons in state or national organizations.
This publication is based on work sponsored wholly, or in part, by the Office of Educational Research & Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under Contract Number RP91002003. The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of OERI, the Department, or any other agency of the U.S. Government.