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Abstract
Similar to many other countries, an educational reform anchored in a managerial discourse was proposed in Israel in 2004 by the Dovrat Committee, encouraged by the ‘inter-state education gap’ social problem that economist Dan Ben-David formulated on the basis of international examinations, such as PISA and TIMMS. Through a neo-Weberian approach this study follows the construction of a managerial discourse from the 1970s onwards that led to the Dovrat report. In the first period, managerial discourse was constructed around decentralization, parent choice and school autonomy ‘social objects’ by an expanding reformist network of educational scholars and figures from the Ministry of Education and local authorities. The pervasion of managerial discourse paved the way for the nomination of Shlomo Dovrat, a philanthropic entrepreneur, as head of the committee for revision of the education system. The second period was characterized by an increasing involvement of public policy departments and philanthropic associations in the formulation of education policies and the construction of social objects, mainly: evaluation; standards and measurement; principals' training; and teacher status reforms. The construction of these social objects, despite the rejection of the Dovrat reform, shows that the managerial has already pervaded the professional and public arena.
Notes
1. The managerial discourse in western countries includes additional social objects such as ‘accountability’ and ‘privatization’, however, my analysis is centered on what I consider to be the main social objects in the construction of the managerial reformist discourse in Israel.
2. Moshe Zinbar used to teach at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University.
3. Shimshon Shohani was awarded his PhD in the University New York in Buffalo (1975) and served as director of the Tel Aviv Education Administration between 1978 and 1986. He was appointed Director General at the Ministry of Education in three periods 1986–1989, 1993–1996 and 2009–the present.
4. Victor Lavy obtained his PhD in Economics at the University of Chicago and worked many years for the Research Department of the World Bank (Washington, DC) He is a research associate in the Center for Economics and Policy Research, London, UK (http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/lavy/cv.pdf). In Israel, he served as Policy Adviser Energy Ministry, Deputy Director General (1980–1983) and as policy adviser in the Education Ministry, Director General (1999–2003)
5. The ELA Committee submitted the ‘Proposal for Structural Reform of Israel's Educational System’ in 2003 (http://www.achrayutleumit.org.il/edu).
6. Ronit Tirosh headed the Tel Aviv Education and Culture Administration (1997–2000) and was Director General of the Ministry of Education (2001–2003).
7. The Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies is a non-profit organization active in Jerusalem since 1991, founded and supported by Dr. Stephen H. Floersheimer (http://www.hunews.huji.ac.il/articles.asp?cat=3&artID=902).
8. Rina Shapira was interviewed by Har Noi secretary of Dovrat Committee and, according to her, the parent choice topic in the final report was similar to the position paper she submitted to the committee in this issue (R. Shapira, personal communication, October 24, 2010).
9. Cited in ‘Proposal for Structural Reform of Israel's Educational System’ (2003) formulated by the ELA Committee, a committee of ‘Citizens for the Advancement of Education in Israel’ in which Ben-David was one of its main leaders.
10. Dovrat knew Buzaglo, a specialist in the teaching of mathematics, from his collaboration in education projects supported by the philanthropic entrepreneur.
11. Ofer Brandeis, a software engineer who works in Dovrat's high-tech corporation and who had served as a senior Advisor to the Minister of Education in the past; two economists, Victor Lavy and Ruth Klinov, both experts from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who had served in the past in the World Bank; three law specialists, Nili Cohen, Amnon Rubinstein and Dan Gibton from the Tel Aviv University; three rabbis, including Rabbi Shai Piron (used to work in the Alut Foundation – The Israeli Society for autistic children, in which Meir Shani was deeply involved); a Bedouin scholar, Dr. Ismail Abu Assad; three former principals, Ilana Bar, Jackie Vanunu and Ruth Ottolenghi. The latter, one of the two coordinators of the Dovrat Committee, served as the head of Secondary Education Section at the Ministry of Education and used to be in contact with Dovrat and Danziger when they were responsible for the principals’ project in IVN. The second coordinator of the committee Shmuel Har Noi (used to work for Rashi Foundation) and Vanunu (was in contact with IVN when he was Director of the Education Administration of the Afula municipality) were also already known by Dovrat and Danziger from IVN activity in the past.
12. The Israeli Association for Program Evaluation (IAPE) was founded in 1998 (Levin-Rozalis & Shochot-Reich, Citation2009).
14. Source: The General Director's speech in the booklet: The standards based education system. Jerusalem, the Ministry of Education: http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/MinhalPedagogi/Agafim/Mosadot/standrtimbhinuk.htm
16. The largest associations involved in education include Yad Hanadiv Foundation, Karev Foundation and Mandel Institute.
17. Departments of public policy have been created in Israeli universities relatively late compared to western countries. The Department of Public Policy in Tel Aviv University was founded in 1985 and enlarged in 1994, in the Hebrew University in 1996 and further developed in 2003 and in Haifa University in 2004.
18. Among the most active education entrepreneurs in Israel we can mention Shlomo Dovrat, Dov Lautman, Itzik Danziger, Ofer Brandeis and Avi Naor.