This paper reports a 2-year study of education policy that sought to identify, describe, and analyze the essential building blocks of state-level education policy and to discover the factors responsible for creating differences among states in their use of these elements to construct an overall framework for school regulation and support. Sample selection for the study involved two analytical levels: identification of a sample of six state policy systems, and selection of 140 key actors within those states for interview and survey data collection. The six states are: Arizona, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin. After an executive summary, chapter 1 outlines the background for the study of state education policy systems and lists 26 references. Chapter 2 describes the research design and methodology for the study and lists 18 references. Chapter 3 examines the state policy mechanisms of ranking, attention, and knowledgeability. Chapter 4 looks at competing approaches to seven alternative state policy mechanisms. The fifth chaper explores values in legislative codes and cites nine references. Chapter 6 examines political culture values of state education policymakers and cites 32 references. Chapter 7 looks at state statistical profiles that illuminate educational policy in the six sample states. The eighth chapter describes public values as origins of policy actions. Chapter 9 explores the influence, power, and policymaking processes and lists nine references. The final chapter examines assumptive worlds and education policymakers and cites 37 references. A total of 65 tables, 40 figures, and 10 appendices containing the study instruments and data collection forms are included. (WTH)