The core ideals of a nation drive and constrain its policy. History offers explanations of how current educational practices came to be and hints of how those practices might be changed. High level policies in a democracy are decided by the convoluted and imperfect means of politics. The impetus for policy comes from evolving values, ideas, problems, and opportunities. A policy may be developed from intuition, modeled on existing policies, or engineered from precepts about human and social behavior.
Policy analysis assesses the potential advantages and disadvantages of one or more policy proposals.
High level education policies are adopted through the political process, but low-level policies are adopted administratively by school district personnel, school principals, and even teachers. After a policy is adopted, its implementation must be managed carefully to achieve success. Program evaluation assesses whether a policy has been implemented as intended, whether it is having the intended effects, and whether it is having unintended positive or negative side effects. Adopted policies may be subsequently reconsidered, often early on, if implementation runs into problems, and sometimes years later, when it appears a policy has outlived its usefulness. Quantitative and qualitative research and evaluation methods can be a valuable tool at several points in the policy cycle.