David H. Monk

Education Productivity Research: An Update and Assessment of Its Role in Education Finance Reform:

This article begins with a critical review of alternative strategies currently in use to study educational productivity. These unfolding research programs are considered in the light of increasing public demands for improvement of productivity in education. A critique is offered of the dominant conception of the education production process that undergirds many of these studies, and alternative conceptions are offered. The effects of efforts to improve productivity are examined in the context of each of these different conceptions. The article concludes by advocating a new line of research designed to generate insight into more fundamental aspects of education production processes. This new type of productivity research places greater emphasis than is customary on the classroom as the unit of analysis.

Predictors of High School Academic Course Offerings: The Role of School Size

Relationships between high school structural characteristics and curricular offerings are examined in this study using survey data from High School and Beyond. Emphasis is placed on the role played by high school size. The study’s central thesis is that the effects of school size on the curriculum will vary depending on subject area, the character of the course being offered (e.g., advanced versus remedial), and the setting in which the school is located. The influence of other structural features, most notably socioeconomic status (SES), unionization, urban location, and grade configuration, are also examined. Findings are consistent with the basic proposition that the effects of size are differentiated within high schools. The findings have implications for assessments of equality of educational opportunity as well as for the renewed debate over optimal high school size.

Secondary school size and curriculum comprehensiveness

Abstract If economies of scale are important in secondary education, it ought to be possible to observe fewer problems with input indivisibility and greater degrees of resource specialization in larger compared to smaller secondary schools. Moreover, it ought to be possible to observe some evidence of greater curriculum comprehensiveness in larger schools since this is one of the possible consequences of scale economies. The present study examines these phenomena using data collected in New York State schools. Results indicate that the sources of scale economies are largely exhausted by the time enrollments reach relatively small levels and that beyond these modest enrollment levels, gains in curricular comprehensiveness are trivial.

The Education Production Function: Its Evolving Role in Policy Analysis:

Production research in education has been dominated by attempts to estimate the structural parameters of what has been called the education production function. These estimation attempts are viewed in this article as only one way the production function concept can be drawn upon to inform debates over education policy. After exploring what it means to posit the existence of the education production function, the article critically reviews past estimation efforts and gives examples of how the production function can be used as a source of insight to guide policy-relevant inquiries into education productivity.

Assigning Elementary Pupils to Their Teachers.

This study examines variation in the methods used to assign students to classrooms and teachers in a small but highly diversified sample of elementary schools. Explicit attention is given to parental influence on pupil assignments as well as to the effects of having an unusually incompetent or excellent teacher at a particular grade level. Interviews with principals constitute the data base for the study. 3 basic student assignment methods are identified and vary in terms of the involvement of principals and teachers. The most common method entailed high principal involvement and the use of the random selection of students from within categories. Criteria principals use to assess the legitimacy of parent requests and the strategies principals use to respond are reported. Strategies principals employ to assign pupils to teachers known to be incompetent are also reported. The article concludes with a discussion of future research needed in this area.

School Size and Program Comprehensiveness: Evidence From High School and Beyond

The demand for school improvement has increased concern over the ability of small high schools to offer comprehensive programs and has raised anew the pressure for consolidation. However, although large schools clearly offer more courses than do small ones, it is less clear that they offer more comprehensive programs. In this study we use the High School and Beyond data to address three questions, (a) Are the math, science, and foreign language programs of large schools more comprehensive than those of small ones? (b) For any given school size, are these programs equally comprehensive? (c) Is there some point on the school size continuum beyond which comprehensiveness shows little change? We find that although large schools offer more comprehensive programs than do small ones, there is substantial variation in comprehensiveness among the three programs at any given school size, and there is no common point where the programs of smaller schools approximate the comprehensiveness of larger ones.

Patterns of Absence and Pupil Achievement

Student absences throughout the school year vary in timing and number. Similarly, classrooms vary in the total number of pupil days of absence, in the distribution of absences throughout all school days, and in the degree to which the same students are repeatedly absent. This paper compares these and other aspects of absentee patterns with pupils’ performance on a standardized ninth grade algebra examination. Results indicate that patterns of absence, in addition to the gross quantity of absence, are related to pupils’ performance. Moreover, results indicate that attending students’ test score performance is sensitive to classmates’ absences.

How and Where the Education Dollar Is Spent

Locally elected school boards have the authority and responsibility to decide how school budgets will be spent. In doing so, however, they must balance multiple funding restrictions and competing priorities. Despite great variance in local circumstances, most school districts have remarkably similar spending patterns, generally allocating from 60% to 63% of their budget to instruction and dividing the remainder among student services such as health services, counseling, and speech therapy; administration; building operation and maintenance; and food services and transportation. Polls show that many districts are attempting to delegate more decisions over resource allocation to the school site level. Research is just beginning to show what aspects of school site decision making are associated with improved teaching and learning.

The Conception of Size and the Internal Allocation of School District Resources.

The effects of organizational size on school processes are studied in this article through the use of a resource allocation model. The model stresses the importance of including nonpurchased resources provided outside of school in the calculation of educational costs. Distinctions are drawn among various conceptions of school district size, and resource allocation implications for each are derived. Empirical evidence from New York State is used to test the proposition that the consequences of differences in size are distributed unequally among categories of students. This within district inequality could be viewed as a potentially serious denial of equal educational opportunity.

Accountability, resource allocation and the production of educational outcomes

Abstract In this chapter, the authors propose and evaluate an accountability system based on indicators that combine elements of both inputs and outcomes. The authors stress the importance of ensuring that accountability systems in education are flexible and sensitive to the sometimes competing ends that schooling systems pursue. This approach places considerable emphasis on open inquiry and discussion between centralized authorities and constituent schooling units. The authors envision a four phase accountability strategy which attempts to move the system away from a reliance on penalties and rewards and toward a system based on cooperation and communication. An overview of an effort to implement this kind of approach in New York State is provided.