This study is focused on conceptual paper and the purpose of this study is to conduct an empirical investigation into the Malaysian Preschool institutions, focusing on measuring their technical efficiency and productivity changes. This study is to examine the nature of productivity changes by means of bootstrapped Malmquist TFP indices. The study…

Class-size reduction (CSR) mandates presuppose that resources provided to reduce class size will have a larger impact on student outcomes than resources that districts can spend as they see fit. I estimate the impact of Florida's statewide CSR policy by comparing the deviations from prior achievement trends in districts that were required to…

A survey of literature regarding production functions or the technical relationships between the inputs and outputs of education. The survey includes the methodology for establishing production functions, the problems associated with establishing such functions, and the application of production functions in educational planning at macro and micro…

Resource allocation within education systems is approached from the perspective of economic theory and input-output processes. It is suggested that economic concepts of efficiency and productivity focus attention on factors affecting effective use of resources and should be systematically encouraged. (Author/MSE)

A "second best" approach, reintroducing educational productivity analyses into school finance reform strategies, may help to promote efficiency in the provision of educational services. The limitations of analysis models and measurement of equity and efficiency are discussed. (Author/CM)

First generation resource allocation studies examined relationships between student learning and the availability of resources to a school or district. This article analyzes the transition from these early inquiries to more recent studies of resource flow into the individual classroom, and considers the contributions economists can make to such…

Support for public education wavers in a number of states due to a lack of evidence indicating that increased funding is associated with increases in output. Maintaining and increasing this support, however, is critical for rural communities as they seek to strengthen their human capital base as a strategy for economic growth and development. The…

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…

Analyzes resource allocations in institutions of higher education to undergraduate costs, graduate costs, and faculty research and teaching time in order to determine educational "productivity." Although real undergraduate costs were found to be much lower than previously assumed, cost-based subsidies and the redistributive effects of higher…

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…

This paper discusses a statistical analysis of the impact on student learning of socioeconomic characteristics, certain aspects of the school environment, and the amount of educational resources expanded on students. It is felt that the analysis is quite similar to what economists do when they estimate production functions for films; but that…

This report explores some techniques that could assist educational managers in their attempts to arrive at more optimal input and output mixes. Following a review of the literature on input-output analyses in education and a description of the Pennsylvania Educational Quality Assessment Program (the basis of the present study), an empirical…

This monograph summarizes and evaluates "educational production function analyses"--studies of the relation between inputs and outputs in an education system--in order to aid in educational manpower policy making. In addition, data from New York state school districts and from a large national sample of high school students is subjected to…

Data from studies of productivity and funding at colleges and universities show that teacher education is seriously underfinanced, in part because of the ways that university administrators allocate money provided under state funding formulas among their departments. Options for a more equitable distribution of funds are suggested. (PP)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the problems and prospects of applying production function or input-output analysis to the process of schooling. The cognitive aspect of schooling is discussed here and is restricted to those aspects readily measured by achievement tests. It is argued that education production function studies should…