Suchergebnisse

In line with social capital theory, citizen involvement in local education policy making should affect education performance. Specifically, because voting turnout and candidate competition in school district elections are accountability mechanisms and reflections of a district's social capital, these characteristics of school board elections should affect how schools perform. Using official Missouri election records and school district data, this article examines the effect of district social capital (i.e., voting turnout and candidate competition), demographics, and school resources on school performance (i.e., standardized test scores and graduation rates). Mixed support is found for social capital theory, with voting turnout significantly affecting standardized test scores, though not graduation rates, and candidate competition influencing graduation rates, though in an unexpected direction. This study expands our understanding of the factors affecting school performance and informs the discussion of education reform.En línea con la teoría del capital social, la participación de los ciudadanos en la hechura de las políticas de educación local debería afectar el rendimiento escolar. Específicamente, porque la participación en la votación y el grado de competencia entre candidatos en las elecciones en los distritos escolares son mecanismos de rendición de cuentas y un reflejo del capital social del distrito, estas características de las elecciones del consejo escolar deberían afectar el desempeño de las escuelas. Utilizando registros oficiales de las elecciones en Missouri e información de los distritos escolares, este artículo examina el efecto del capital social del distrito (i.e., participación en la votación y el grado de competencia entre candidatos), la demografía, y los recursos escolares en el rendimiento escolar (i.e., los resultados estandarizados de las pruebas y las tasas de graduación). Se encuentra un apoyo mixto para la teoría del capital social donde la participación en la votación afecta considerablemente los resultados estandarizados de las pruebas, aunque no a las tasas de graduación, y en una dirección inesperada, el grado de competencia entre candidatos influye a las tasas de graduación. Este articulo amplia nuestro entendimiento de los factores que afectan el rendimiento escolar y fortalece la discusión sobre la reforma educativa.

AbstractEarth Day 1970's legacy overshadows two earlier events resulting in popular misconceptions about U.S. environmental politics: that environmental policy began with Earth Day and that Congress and the president were not concerned with the environment until public opinion and interest groups pressured them. These misconceptions increase public opinion ambivalence and frustrate environmental leaders. This paper describes Earth Day 1970, the congressionally established Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission established in 1958, and President Kennedy's Natural Resources Tour of September 1963, arguing the latter two prepared for the convergence of multiple streams of policy change that resulted in the first Earth Day.

Concerned with postlegislative careers, legislators were found to seek & accept previously unattractive employment before they faced mandatory retirement from the legislature. Voluntary midterm resignations should be discouraged as a matter of public policy. 2 Tables, 14 References. Adapted from the source document.

Biotechnology is an evolving policy issue involving a wide variety of federal and state policymakers. While most public and scholarly attention has been focused at the national level, a good deal of state policymaking activity regarding biotechnology has already taken place. The biotechnology issue is not a single, well-defined policy issue but rather a cluster of related issues and concerns. This analysis identifies eight facets of the biotechnology policy issue that have surfaced during congressional debate, committee hearings, and public discussions. This eight-fold characterization of biotechnology development is used to describe recent congressional and state legislative activity affecting biotechnology. Both the complexity and multifaceted nature of the biotechnology issue, and the manner with which it has been dealt by federal and state policymakers, have contributed to the dynamic nature of federalism surrounding this issue.

This Political Science course, titled "Policy Issues Surrounding Biotechnology," set out to describe, explain, and evaluate public policies that regulate and support applications of biotechnology in agriculture and medicine. Only a few students had a basic familiarity with biotechnology and none had a strong science background. Most of the 25 political science and journalism students took the junior-senior level course not because of an interest in biotechnology but because they wanted to study a specific policy issue in some depth. The students jointly prepared a 56-page report and presented it to a panel of Missouri state legislators in a mock legislative hearing in April, 1991.