Educators and legislators tend to have differing impressions of the definition of educational quality. Components of quality can be classified into three categories: (1) input, e.g., student characteristics, such as grade point average and test scores, and faculty characteristics, such as advanced degrees and publications; (2) environment/process,…

Individual members of state legislatures wield the greatest influence in state level policy formation. This was one of the findings of a study that identified the power and influence context of state-level policymaking. Data were gathered from six states (Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois) using an instrument…

This study was undertaken to determine the perceptions of a wide range of citizens and to inform the Mississippi Legislature on the issue of merit pay in education. From each of 50 randomly selected Mississippi school districts, a representation of grades K through 12 was chosen, with all professional and administrative staff members asked to…