Describes a study examining relationships among three broad sets of variables: strategic planning in school districts; school district achievement in reading, language arts, and mathematics; and school district financial and demographic factors. All 178 Kentucky public school districts were asked to participate; 127 replied. Significant…

There are a number of reasonable explanations why the growth of college costs exceeds that in other economic sectors. How higher education has avoided market and/or legislative discipline is unclear, but the growth in debt cannot continue, and colleges and universities will be called on for efficiency and productivity. (MSE)

A study tested five propositions: citizens in consolidated governments are less informed about government services than those in fragmented systems; consolidated citizens are less efficacious; larger consolidated governments have less citizen participation; consolidated citizens are more dissatisfied; and competition among fragmented systems…

As public officials become increasingly pressured to do more with less, the search for efficiency will expand. Efficiency studies are being undertaken to gauge organizational effectiveness in administration; personnel productivity; privatization options; materials management; mangagement information and control; and vehicle, equipment, and…

Explains how cost-utility analysis can be applied to the selection of curriculum and instructional methods. Describes the use of multiattribute utility models of decision making as a tool for more informed judgment in educational administration. (SK)

Many schools lag far behind the technology curve in making optimal administrative use of computers. This article provides a 10-item test to help administrators gauge their school's efficiency in this area. (MLH)

Offers suggestions for avoiding common errors in online microcomputer use. Areas discussed include learning the basics; hardware protection; backup options; hard disk organization; software selection; file security; and the use of dedicated communications lines. (CLB)

Simplicity and efficiency in design and estimation are all important in deciding on sampling strategies. A simple model is given and illustrated for four practical situations to show how a good sampling strategy should be selected. (Author)

Examines the emergence of "third wave" school restructuring from the fields of educational technology, instructional design, and systems theory. Argues that its core principles--social functionalism, efficiency and productivity, individualism, and expertism--will likely reinforce existing practices instead of substantively transforming…

Examines factors related to efficiency in a textbook search task. Finds that time and accuracy involved distinct processes and that accuracy was related to verbal competence. Finds further that measures of planning and extracting information accounted for 59% of the variance in search efficiency. Suggests that both accuracy and rate need to be…

Tainted by failure, rooted in myth, and marked by questionable practice, public-private partnerships in education are risky. Performance contracting failed miserably in the 1970s. Faulty privatization rationales include myths surrounding SAT test scores and the "bloated bureaucracy" and "money doesn't matter" arguments. Neither…

Discusses a normative strategy toward pricing human services, which will allow providers to develop pricing strategies within the context of organizational missions, goals, and values. Pricing is an effective tool for distributing resources and improving efficiency, and can be used as a tool for encouraging desired patterns of service utilization.…

Applying Deming's principles to education represents change in metaphor, not paradigm shift. Exchanging factory metaphor for enlightened corporation metaphor updates business/economics image but perpetuates view of students as raw materials to be processed efficiently. No business metaphor truly aims at improving society as a whole. If production…

Estimates of interindustry wage differences using National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men data show that 84% of variance is explained by individual fixed effects. Although efficiency wage theories predict that differences should widen in a recession, these data do not demonstrate such a tendency. (SK)

Discussion of working environments that enhance performance highlights a holistic planning model; activity-based versus organizational-based planning; private and collaborative spaces; worker involvement in the planning process; and measuring effectiveness versus efficiency. (LRW)