TY - JOUR
T1 - Does more school district administration lower educational productivity? Some evidence on the "administrative blob" in New York public schools
AU - Brewer, Dominic J.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements--I thank Ronald G. Ehrenberg, David H. Monk, seminar participants at the American Education Finance Association Conference in Nashville (March 1994), and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version. Financial support for this paper was provided by RAND's Institute on Education and Training with funding provided by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, and by the Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). CPRE is a consortium of the University of Southern California, Rutgers University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Michigan State University, Stanford University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, supported by grant #R1178G10039 from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement. I am also indebted to the New York State Department of Education for permission to use some of the data analyzed in this paper. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily shared by RAND, CPRE or the U.S. Department of Education.
PY - 1996/4
Y1 - 1996/4
N2 - U.S. public schools are often criticized as overly bureaucratic: administration is said to consume too great a share of educational resources, to the detriment of educational productivity. Despite this common assertion, remarkably little is known about the resource allocation patterns of school districts, how these vary across districts, and how they have changed over time. This paper presents some evidence on resource allocation in New York state, using a panel of school districts, 1978-87. The paper then attempts to determine if there is any evidence at the district level of a systematic relationship between administrative inputs and educational output in the form of standardized test scores. A variety of statistical models is shown to yield inconsistent results, providing weak support for the contention that administrative resources are necessarily detrimental to educational productivity.
AB - U.S. public schools are often criticized as overly bureaucratic: administration is said to consume too great a share of educational resources, to the detriment of educational productivity. Despite this common assertion, remarkably little is known about the resource allocation patterns of school districts, how these vary across districts, and how they have changed over time. This paper presents some evidence on resource allocation in New York state, using a panel of school districts, 1978-87. The paper then attempts to determine if there is any evidence at the district level of a systematic relationship between administrative inputs and educational output in the form of standardized test scores. A variety of statistical models is shown to yield inconsistent results, providing weak support for the contention that administrative resources are necessarily detrimental to educational productivity.
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U2 - 10.1016/0272-7757(95)00032-1
DO - 10.1016/0272-7757(95)00032-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0004615272
SN - 0272-7757
VL - 15
SP - 111
EP - 124
JO - Economics of Education Review
JF - Economics of Education Review
IS - 2
ER -