Is An Inspector Needed In Order To Implement Educational Reform?

Reforms in the educational system- the history

Reform in the field of education is defined as a planned change process meant to achieve praiseworthy purposes from the points of view of their initiators (Wideen, 1995).

This definition hints at the fact that reforms are top-down processes. Research carried out by the Rand Corporation in 1978, for the American Department of Education, examined what factors led to the success or failure of reforms in the education system funded by the government. However, many years have passed since then, but the research conclusions are relevant to this day. The principal finding was that if there is no teacher commitment from the earliest stages of the reform, there is no chance that their support will be garnered at later stages. For our purposes, the meaning of the research is that top-down reforms have a higher chance of failure (Berman & Mclaughlin, 1978). Indeed, there are few reforms meant to change something in classrooms that have crossed their threshold and remained there. Nonetheless, (Eisner, 1992) argued that schools are institutions immune to change and therefore it is easier to change educational policy than to change school's modus operandi. Ginzburg (1991) noted that the assumption accepted today is that educational reforms are influenced more by global political and economic processes and less by internal-systemic processes. In contrast to this assumption, there are those who espouse that educational systems have enough autonomy to manage reforms as they judge fit (Navarro, 1998).

Reforms in the educational system- now days

Hattie (2015a) maintains that reforms today focus on and invest huge amounts of money and effort in popular solutions that contribute very little, if anything, to pupils' advancement and concentrate these efforts on five 'families' of policy steps, which according to meta-analysis, have little if any effect on learning achievements:

• To satisfy parents (for example, smaller classes, choosing schools)

• To fix infrastructures

• To fix pupils (for example, emphasis on diagnosing learning disabilities)

• To fix schools (for example, school autonomy)

• To fix teachers (for example, differential remuneration according to achievements).

In his article, Hattie even verified in research that each such 'family' testified to its minute effect on what happens in schools. Hattie did not just write about what did not work, but proposed eight steps on which educational reforms should focus, so that they will be assimilated and meaningful (Hattie, 2015b). I will not detail all eight steps, but I will point out they are mainly steps that are not 'visible' to parents or policy makers such as: changing the narrative from an achievements discourse to focusing on an individualized discussion about each child in a way that can the child's progress and fully utilize his/her hidden potential every year, so too with regard to teachers etc.

A position paper published by the Israeli Ministry of Education, reviewed educational reforms and proposed sorting them according to various criteria: Scope: Systemic reform that includes all school systems and seeks to bring about change to every aspect of school life so as to raise pupils' achievements (Greenberg & Sorek, 2003) in contrast to a limited reform, according to the objects of change, such as: teaching-learning processes, organization and structure, curricula, centralization or decentralization, core values such as : integration and inclusion or excellence, or units of change such as: teachers, school, professional practice.

Greenberg and Sorek (2003) refer to groups of variables constituting part of a comprehensive systematic reform:

1.Core variables - this group includes pupils' achievements, curricula, teaching and assessment.

2.Advancement variables - this group includes learning environment, technology, school-community relationships and time.

3.Separating variables, including supervision and administration, teachers' leadership, human resource structures and work relationships (Vidislavski, 2012).

Faced with all proposed models, Gaziel (2007) summarized his review of educational reforms pessimistically, maintaining that they are based on rhetoric and there is no hope that they will be implemented. According to him, what will be will be, reforms range between poles - between centralization and decentralization, between conservative and progressive education - but in fact, do not make any real change at all.

A more optimistic note can

that found that schools in which principals tend to carry out internal school changes frequently, their feelings are that change leads to constant renewal and charges them with new energies and a sense of self-fulfillment.

If we define the success of a reform by its assimilation into school routine, then the actions required for success are cut directly from the same factors that we enumerated as responsible for their failure. The Israeli policy paper discussion educational reforms proposed four foundation stones for their success, which I will detail without expanding on them:

1.Nature of a school, its structure and customary practice: structure of ideas, beliefs, values and routines, leadership skills and functioning, parental and community involvement, curricula, facilities and funding.

2.Reform its content, how it is formulated and activated - congruence between reform components, for example, ongoing assessment of learning and teaching as well as external exams have to be adapted to the desired goals. Guaranteed ideological grounds for a reform, and matching it to the regional context of each inspectorate region, settlement and school, and finally developing organizational structural components that support pedagogical changes.

3.Stakeholders: to guarantee their partnership and participation both as a group and as individuals.

4.Political echelons and policy makers - and commitment of all echelons to the reform, including creating a suitable atmosphere, removing administrative obstacles, allocating required resources in budgets, time, professional knowledge, facilities and the like (Vidislavski, 2012).

One can argue whether these components are ranked by importance and my view is that there is no one that stands alone and that each one constitutes an essential condition but are not enough for a successful reform. Many studies have examined reform frameworks or the role of principals and teachers as key figures in their success. A few have examined the overall place of inspectors in leading and implementing educational reforms in schools (Gaziel, 2007). One of the reasons for this is the tendency not to differentiate between the roles of principals and inspectors and differences in their training, as well as a lack of agreement among researchers regarding what should be studied (Cooper, Fusarelli, Jackson, & Poster, 2002). This is amazing in itself, mainly because one of the components of successful implementation of reforms - included in the fourth component identified by policy makers and that is the link connecting political echelons and managers in the education field. It appears as if the role of inspectors is obvious, but this is not the case