Clear funding/achievement relationships are emerging from the recent body of production-function research. Money does matter in producing educational outcomes. Factors such as small class size and teacher experience can drive up instructional costs. Schools cannot operate efficiently with scanty resources. Equalizing quality resource inputs is a…

Although organizational theorists have long acknowledged control processes as integral to organizational operations, we may be entering an age of more insidious, deleterious forms of control. Recent technological and managerial innovations disguise control in emancipation rhetoric. The papers selected for this special issue cover various…

Explores how the social reconstructionist tradition in teacher education provides insights for developing teacher leaders. Describes three other historical traditions (academic, social efficiency, and developmental) guiding teacher education, identifies primary features of social reconstructionist programs, and discusses five specific domains that…

Responding to criticisms from James Gallagher, Richard Jaeger, John Hattie, and Robert Slavin, the authors contend that detracking creates both winners and losers. Policymakers face a tradeoff between helping low-achieving students and hurting high-achieving ones. The decision depends on how society weighs competing notions of equity and…

Discusses methods of managing queues (waiting lines) to optimize the use of student computer stations in school library media centers and to make searches more efficient and effective. The three major factors in queue management are arrival interval of the patrons, service time, and number of stations. (Author/LRW)

A unique partnership of industry, government, and the University of Sunderland involves a holistic approach to manufacturing, integrating efficiency with quality of life for a profitable and sustainable competitive advantage. (SK)

Transition courses for licensed practical nurses moving into associate degree programs and for registered nurses earning bypass credit in bachelor's degree programs was evaluated through surveys of 237 students and graduates, 68 supervisors, and faculty. Students invested half the time and money as regular students; they wanted better advisement…

Applies multilevel models of cost-effectiveness to numerous types of (British) institutions providing courses of instruction in the General Certificate of Education at Advanced Level. Different impressions may be gained about an institution's relative effectiveness when cost considerations are combined with outcome measures. Data evaluation needs…

Suggests the digital revolution in the university and the culture as a whole mandates widespread adoption of technology in all facets of student support services, providing powerful new tools for meeting student needs. Advantages of adopting new technology include speed and accuracy, convenience, efficiency, security, improved evaluation and…

Discusses the theory of microeconomic efficiency measurement, including frontier efficiency-measurement techniques; reviews the research measuring inefficiency in education; discusses the determinants of educational efficiency; includes table listing author, methodology, inputs and output, analytical techniques, and main findings for 28 studies of…

Canadian humorist Steven Leacock once told a story about a jockey who became so upset over bad news that he leaped on his horse and rode off in all directions. According to this author, that action well summarizes the condition of the State of Arkansas after receiving a Supreme Court order to provide an equal and adequate education to the children…

In this paper, we address the often contentious debate over state and local recycling policy by carefully estimating the social net benefit of curbside recycling. Benefits are estimated using household survey data from over 4,000 households across 40 western U.S. cities. We calibrate household willingness to pay for hypothetical bias using an…

Data in social and behavioral sciences typically possess heavy tails. Structural equation modeling is commonly used in analyzing interrelations among variables of such data. Classical methods for structural equation modeling fit a proposed model to the sample covariance matrix, which can lead to very inefficient parameter estimates. By fitting a…

Efficiency scores are determined for Canadian universities using both data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier methods for selected specifications. The outcomes are compared. There is considerable divergence in the efficiency scores and their rankings among methods and specifications. An analysis of rankings, however, reveals that the…

This study applied the maximum expected information (MEI) and the maximum posterior-weighted information (MPI) approaches of computer adaptive testing item selection to the case of a test using polytomous items following the partial credit model. The MEI and MPI approaches are described. A simulation study compared the efficiency of ability…