Public school critics often point to rising expenditures and relatively flat test scores to justify their school reform agendas. The claims are flawed because their analyses fail to account for the difference in data types between dollars (ratio) and test scores (interval). A cost-benefit analysis using dollars as a common metric for both costs…

In this paper, the authors begin by classifying the arguments that assert American schools are relatively inefficient into two categories: the "long-term trend argument" and the "international comparison argument." Their focus herein is on the latter of these two. They then describe two frameworks for approaching either of…