Data Envelopment Analysis: Measurement of Educational Efficiency in Texas Page: 40
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professions, levels of education, opinions, and special interests. After all, school board members
are elected officials representing not only their constituents, but often their own children attend
the school district which may lead to subjective decision making. In fact, Herbert J. Walberg,
from the University of Illinois at Chicago offered this perspective in 2004 regarding the
competency of school district policy and decision makers to spend money economically on
educational programs:
School board members and most educators lack education and experience in
accountability, evaluation and methods of psychometrics and statistics that would enable
them to choose effective efficient programs and weed out others. Though these tasks
should be central to leaders aiming to measure, evaluate and improve learning, they are
neglected. Consequently, popular programs are often chosen by fad and reputation rather
than by a careful review of evidence of their results and costs. (Walberg, 2004, p.13)
Determining the most efficient use of school resources necessitated studying the effects
of multiple independent variables on educational production outcomes. Ruggiero authored a
chapter in Handbook on Data Analysis (2004), edited by DEA founding researcher Cooper as
well as Seiford and Zhu. In his chapter, Performance Evaluation in Education, Ruggiero alleged
socioeconomic conditions account for the greatest influence on the data. Rassouli-Currier's
(2007) Oklahoma schools paper reports socioeconomic factors as the key elements for
determining inefficiency. Socioeconomic factors significantly influenced student achievement
scores as determined by Chakraborty (2009) in the study analyzing Kansas school districts.
The aforementioned study of efficiency of New York public schools by Ruggiero and
Vitaliano (1999) argued that schools paying higher teacher salaries operated less efficiently and
those with more poverty performed more efficiently. The authors suggested poorer schools
economize their resources due to budget constraints. The topic of school inefficiency was
mentioned in the final paragraph of the New York study as important for research in the future.40
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Carter, Lacy. Data Envelopment Analysis: Measurement of Educational Efficiency in Texas, dissertation, August 2012; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc149569/m1/49/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .