In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, education policy debates have thrust a heightened focus on the provision of adequate school resources and on educator well-being and turnover, concerns particularly critical for school districts that serve large shares of economically disadvantaged students. In this article, we investigate voter and parent…

The U.S. Constitution is the most well-known governing document in the country--studied by students, endlessly interpreted and reinterpreted by judges and political pundits, and placed in the category of near-religious reverence by many Americans. In the last 50 years it has been amended exactly once, in a ratification process that took over 200…

In the first half of 2021, 33 states considered new private school choice legislation. Despite this legislative interest, public opinion on private school choice remains varied. In this paper, we examine voter support for private school choice in Missouri, a politically conservative state that lacked a private school choice program until 2021. We…

While U.S. voters delivered a significant change in the 2024 federal elections, they opted for steady leadership at the state level. No state board of education shifted in partisan control, and only five seats saw a shift in political party out of 27 races that were contested in the general election. This policy update looks at the results of…

The authors surveyed 1,998 Missourians to evaluate (a) awareness and (b) understanding of messages about the impact of tobacco use in Missouri, (c) belief in the accuracy of the messages, and (d) intention to vote for a tobacco tax increase on the basis of the messages. Using structural equation modeling, the relationships among these four…

Despite the recent turmoil in the U.S. economy, most libraries that were tracked by "Library Journal" won their referenda at a rate just slightly lower than 2007. Nearly three-quarters of operating referenda passed. Building referenda under $10 million passed at a whopping 85%, with those over $10 million batting slightly better than…

Many school districts are in need of a successful plan of action for school district referendums. The purpose of this descriptive study was to determine the perceived effectiveness between factors and strategies surrounding referendums and the passage of those measures meant to improve school funding and facilities. The findings from Johnson and…

Education issues are poised to break through the din of presidential politics and economic anxiety in more than a dozen states next month, as voters confront ballot questions and constitutional amendments involving K-12 policy and school finance. High on the list are gambling referendums in six states--Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Maryland,…

This paper explores the educational role of newspapers in increasing participation in the presidential nomination process. Democratic caucus coverage in 9 daily Missouri newspapers (out of 44 dailies in the state) was examined for the inclusion of concrete, participatory information about the 1992 caucus. Newspapers published over a 5-day period…

In order to investigate how comparable to their white neighbors are black suburbanite perceptions of attitudes toward their new place of residence and its public schools and municipal government, data on black-white attitudes derived from an attitude survey conducted after school tax levy election in Spring 1973 were examined. (Author/JM)

A study of the nomination and election procedures and make-up of the 1967 County University of Missouri Extension Councils, developed from a survey completed in January 1967, was made to analyze the methods used and results obtained by Councils after five years experience under the present state law. Summaries of the data were made by county size;…

Kansas City residents were questioned about their attitudes toward education, the school district, schools in their neighborhood, educational expenditures, and voter behavior. Some comparative conclusions were drawn based on responses of people outside the Kansas City, Missouri School District; data from this survey was also compared with a 1970…

The results are reported of a survey of potential voters in Kansas City, Missouri, relative to their attitudes toward school levy elections. The survey encompassed four major areas, including residents' views on education in general, how they evaluated the public school system in their district, how they evaluated public schools in their…