Book Description

Public organizations charged with coordinating higher education institutions face a complex set of tasks. Whether coordinating institutions within one sector or across sectors, such organizations play vital roles in promoting a state's capacity for policy leadership to meet the growing need for an educated citizenry. National experts have emphasized that effective policy capacity requires coordinating entities that can articulate mission and goals, devise strategies for meeting them, and use resources, including relationships with state leaders, to influence policy. The authors' case study subject, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, was selected because of its track record of focusing a diverse constituency on a valuable public mission and using its resources strategically to facilitate large-scale policy changes aimed at making progress toward the mission. Its effectiveness rests in large part on its continual attention to relationships in order to mediate and balance the needs of various state and local parties. For states interested in improving existing coordinating organizations or designing new ones, the authors suggest that an assessment of the current context can illuminate possibilities for improvement. Multiple factors interact to create forward momentum and can be leveraged in myriad ways. Thus, the self assessment questions are designed so states can more clearly understand the factors at play in their own situations and more strategically evaluate short-term and long-term opportunities. The self-assessment questions fall into three categories: the state political and economic context, the design of the coordinating body itself, and the organization and leadership strategies used by the coordinating body. These factors are generalized from the Washington experience. They do not reflect an exhaustive review of the research or experiences of other states. [For the main report, "On Balance: Lessons in Effective Coordination from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges--An Organizational Perspective," see ED534114.].