Since the 1970s, American governors have become increasingly active in education politics. Where they once told state education chiefs to "make me the best education governor ever," they now demand control of state boards of education, push for state control of school funding, and urge statewide standards for teacher evaluation. This…

Interviews with state legislators from Wisconsin (D. Bezruki), Massachusetts (T. P. Kennedy), and Virginia (P. Leone) illustrate the roles that evaluation is playing in the current state budget crisis. The influence of evaluation data appears largely specific to individual programs rather than systematically applied to the budgeting process. (SLD)

This study was conducted in 1979-80 to obtain baseline opinions of members of the Wisconsin Legislature about vocational education. Sixty-six of the 132 legislators responded to 84 questions regarding the need for, financing of, quality of, and methods of delivering secondary and postsecondary vocational education in the state. The responses were…

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 monograph and its companion, "Legislative Education Leadership in the States," portray the contemporary role of state legislators and map the structure of education leadership in terms of both the characteristics of influential legislators and staff and the nature of influence structures in state legislatures. This volume reports…