Think tanks like ours exist to influence public policy, and the extent to which they achieve that goal is not always easy to monitor. On January 10, PRI received a tangible indication of its impact on the policy debate.

Mr. Terry Tamminen, Cabinet Secretary for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote to PRI’s Lance Izumi about the governor’s recent State of the State address. The reform measures in the governor’s speech, the letter said, were “in part informed by the extensive public policy research you and your colleagues conduct.” How big a part ? As it turns out, a lot.

As the letter reported, the governor’s proposal for merit pay for teachers, for example, “will rely on value-added assessment to reward effective teachers,” an idea PRI has long advanced. The governor also called for teacher tenure to be tied to performance, another concept we have championed.

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