Using data collected in a beginning teacher evaluation study, this paper attempts to show that time is an important input in producing learning. First the paper discusses equalization of tax bases in school districts, inequality in the distribution of inputs, and the importance of multiple outputs in schools. Next it describes an economic model of…

This publication is a discussion of the concept of an educational production function, a mathematical formulation of the relationship between inputs and outputs in education. A description of how a production function can direct decision making toward economic efficiency precedes a theoretical discussion of the nature of actual estimation. Several…

A newly developed input/output method for comparing the efficiency of urban elementary schools is presented. The method results in the identification of efficient and inefficient schools and provides management information relative to input and output measures. (Author/IRT)

In the last decade, a modeling technique has been developed to handle complex input/output analyses where outputs involve joint products and there are no known mathematical relationships linking the outputs or inputs. The technique uses the geometrical concept of a six-dimensional shape called a polytope to analyze the efficiency of each…

The interests of economists in educational systems have taken two directions: (1) Concern for the interchange of resources between educational systems and the national economy, and (2) an interest in the production of education. In expressing the resource interchange, economists rely on the language of productivity. Of concern is the global…

The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, a conceptual model for measuring productivity and efficiency, is presented and applied in this report. First, the DEA model is described, and three of its properties that make it particularly useful are identified; i.e., it measures efficiency of units relative to each other rather than to absolute…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) commissioned the papers in this publication to address advances in measuring education inflation and adjusting for it, as well as to examine the emergence of a new focus on school spending, rather than school district spending, as well as new, private sources of funding for public education, and…