A recent literature provides new evidence that school resources are important for student outcomes. In this paper, we show that school finance reform-induced increases in student performance are driven by those states that had test-based accountability policies in place at the time. By incentivizing school improvement, accountability systems (such…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RTTT) are part of a widely heralded and visible change effort, providing a powerful force--replete with evidence, logic, money, and voice--that is changing public schooling away from locally run and state-subsidized, into a federal-state-controlled enterprise. The article begins by situating the…

This article provides an analysis of the rise of 'scientific management' and 'social efficiency' theories in the early 1900s, traces their impact on the structure and administration of education systems, and critically analyses their contribution to the emergence of a new orthodoxy--outcomes-based education (OBE) approaches to school curriculum…

Part one of this article described the first two stages that schools move through as they learn to link data to higher student achievement. In stage one, schools make initial efforts to contextualize the many data sources available, but their data analysis is mostly for its own sake. In stage two--using data to improve educational efficiency--the…

Are education and efficiency antithetical? Does the pursuit of efficiency in education inevitably lead to misguided practices and measurement attempts that distort the character and purposes of education? Despite legitimate fears about misguided efforts at efficiency, history shows that efficiency and enlightened educational leadership can be…

In addition to setting high standards for student performance, educational policies must consider what resources are essential to provide an adequate educational program to meet all students' learning needs. Policy makers also want to ensure that educators make efficient use of available resources. In this exploration of school finance policy, we…