Search

This article reports on the problems that occurred in evaluating compliance to a human relations policy for education in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction adopted a human relations policy and later proposed an evaluation model for judging results that was incompatible with a model designed by one of the policy implementing agencies, the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The problems of policy evaluation occurred within the context of one state agency making for and delegating policy to another agency for the purpose of implementation. Delegation policy tends to created a bifurcation of interest, policy and administration tends to generate a serious concern about the issue of control of conditions that have internal relevance to either party. The Department of Public Instruction attempted to gain greater control over the human relations policy that it had delegated to the University of Wisconsin to implement. The department proposed the competency-based model of evaluation as a means of protecting and promoting or ensuring that the university would forthrightly carry out the human relations policy that it did not desire nor seek. For the university, however, the political problem was to protect itself from any further control by the Department of Public Instruction. This was done by maintaining control over that part of policy within its professional autonomy; in this case, determining the means of policy implementation and evaluation of the human relations policy. So, the university criticized and rejected the department's competency-based model of evaluation as an infringement upon faculty academic freedom and professional autonomy and proposed a process-based model of evaluation. Thus, each model of evaluation was developed to control some of the conditions of policy that had internal relevance for each party.