Attitudes and perceptions of local educational policy-makers concerning agricultural education programs in Texas high schools

Purpose of the study. The purposes of this study were to assess the attitudes and perceptions of local school board presidents and school superintendents in Texas toward agricultural education and to compare these attitudes between the two groups. The attitudes were also compared between policy-makers of schools with successful agricultural education programs and those from schools whose agricultural education programs were not identified as being successful.;Procedure. A random sample of Texas public school superintendents and school board presidents was drawn from two populations: (a) representing a school whose agricultural education program received the Texas FFA Tri-Star Award, and (b) representing a school whose agricultural education program did not receive the Tri-Star Award. A total of 173 subjects responded to an attitude instrument which was designed to survey attitudes within the following areas of the agricultural education program: (a) finance, (b) career preparation, (c) agriculture teachers, (d) agriculture curriculum, (e) FFA involvement, and (f) agriculture students. Participants responded to five statements concerning each of the six factors indicating a level of agreement. A profile analysis of repeated measures was used to test 17 research hypotheses. The data were analyzed using a main effects analysis, interaction effects analysis, and simple main effects analysis to suggest whether there were general differences between school superintendents and school board presidents in perceptions of agricultural education and whether there were general differences between respondents representing successful agricultural education programs and respondents representing agricultural education programs not identified as successful.;Findings. The main effects analysis, which tested the general effects of group membership on average responses, found no significant difference between superintendents and school board presidents across the six scales. A significant difference was found between Tri-Star schools and not identified schools across the six scales. The interaction effects analysis found no interaction effect of school type by appointment type. Significant interaction effects were found on school type by factor type and appointment type by factor type. Significant simple main effects were obtained for (a) school type by finance, (b) school type by career preparation, (c) school type by agriculture curriculum, and (d) school type by FFA involvement. No significant simple effects were found on agriculture teachers and agriculture students by school type. No significant simple main effects were found involving participant type on any measure.;Conclusions. Superintendents and school board presidents have positive attitudes toward all areas of agricultural education. Policy-makers from schools that received the Tri-Star award have more positive attitudes toward all areas of the agricultural education program than those from schools that did not receive the Tri-Star. School board presidents from schools that received the Tri-Star have more positive attitudes toward agricultural education than superintendents from those schools. Superintendents from schools that did not receive the Tri-Star award have more positive attitudes toward agricultural education than school board presidents from the same schools. Policy-makers from schools that received the Tri-Star award have more positive attitudes regarding finance, career preparation, agriculture teachers, agriculture curriculum, and FFA involvement than policy-makers from schools that did not receive the Tri-Star award.