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…

Input-output research has made valuable contributions to our understanding of schools; however it does not provide reliable evidence concerning how school resources should be allocated. Two input-output studies described indicate that the intuitions of experienced school officials should be heeded by researchers when designing input-output…

To help administrators improve school efficiency in a time of financial constraints, this document reviews research on school productivity, points out possible improvements suggested by the research, and discusses several problems in measuring school costs and effectiveness. The author first explains the analytical concepts of school productivity,…