The design and field test of a policy planning model for long-range planning in a public school district

The purpose of this study was to design and test, in an actual operational setting, a policy planning model that can be used by school districts in their long-range planning efforts to identify and analyze external forces which are likely to influence the internal operations of the district over the next decade. The model is based on planning strategies used by social and behavioral scientists in both private and public sector institutions to enhance group problem-solving and program planning activities. A policy planning model was defined as a specification of procedures used to collect data and to structure the data in a form so that it can be used effectively by decision-makers to examine policy issues and to make judgements about alternative courses of action. The specifications should be sufficiently detailed so that each procedure can be replicated if desired and the anticipated outcomes of each procedure in the sequence can be understood by the researcher and administrators prior to implementation