An Analysis of Attitudes of Selected Educational Personnel and Legislators Concerning Tenure and Continuing Contract Statutes in Minnesota and North Dakota

Problem: This study was concerned with the identification and analysis of the opinions and attitudes of teachers, administrators, school board members and legislators in Minnesota and North Dakota regarding statutory provisions pertain ing to tenure, continuing contracts, non-renewal of contract and teacher dismissals. Procedure: The population, from which the sample of teachers, administrators and school board members was derived, consisted of twenty-eight school districts in Minnesota and twenty-four school districts in North Dakota. The school districts encompassed an area of approximately sixty miles radius of Grand Porks, North Dakota. The sample of legislators consisted of all the senators and representatives in Minnesota and North Dakota who serve on the education committees of their respective states. The following three instruments furnished the necessary data: (1) the Biographical Data Collection Instrument was used to gather relevant background data; (2) the Attitudes and Opinion Survey-Tenure was developed to elicit attitudes and opinions concerning Minnesota\u27s tenure laws for public school tachers; (3) the Attitudes and Opinion Survey-Continuing Contracts was developed to obtain attitudes and opinions concerning North Dakota\u27s continuing contract system for public school teachers. The statistical techniques employed in this study were the Fisher Exact Test and the chi square statistic. The data were arranged in a complete block design with a significance level of .0^ selected a_ priori against which to test the hypotheses. Conclusions: The following conclusions, as limited by the research population, were drawn from the major findings of the study: 1. There were significant differences in the expressed attitudes and opinions of teachers, school board members, administrators and state legislators in Minnesota pertaining to the substantive aspects of tenure, non-renewal of contracts and teacher dismissals on five of the seven substantive questions. 2. There were significant differences in the expressed attitudes and opinions of teachers, school board members, administrators and legislators in the state of Minnesota on two of the four procedural questions pertaining to tenure, non-renewal of contracts and teacher dismissals. 3. There were no significant relationships in selected background variables associated with teachers, school board members, administrators and state legislators in Minnesota and their attitudes and opinions concerning tenure, nonrenewal of contracts and teacher dismissals, k . There were significant differences in the expressed attitudes of teachers, administrators, school board members and state legislators in North Dakota pertaining to four of the eight substantive questions dealing with continuing contracts, non-renewal of contracts and teacher dismissals. 5* There were significant differences in the expressed attitudes and opinions of teachers, school board members, administrators and legislators in the state of North Dakota on one of the four procedural questions pertaining to continuing contracts, non-renewal of contracts and teacher dismissals. 6, There were no significant relationships in selected background variables associated with teachers, school board members, administrators and state legislators in North Dakota and their attitudes and opinions concerning continuing contracts, non-renewal of contracts and teacher dismissals