DISRICT UMERKOT
4.1. SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION FUNCTION
According to Scheerens (2000) School effectiveness is a difficult concept to
define, and, once defined, is of a nature that is difficult to measure. The author
finds different strands of educational-effectiveness research which have
concentrated on different types of variables to answer this question. Economists
have concentrated on resource inputs, such as per-pupil expenditure.
Instructional psychologists have investigated classroom management, such as
time on task and variables associated with instructional strategies. General
education experts and educational sociologists have looked at the aspects of
school organization, such as leadership style (p.19). He describes the
effectiveness as the extent to which the desired level of output is achieved and
efficiently as the desired level of output against the lowest possible cost. In other words, ―efficiency is the effectiveness with the additional requirement that this is achieved in the cheapest possible manner‖ (p.21).
Lockheed and Hanushek (1994) opined that the term efficiency is used in many
ways in educational discussions and the general lack of a consistent definition
at times produces very misleading discussions and policy recommendations.
They find a straightforward rationale behind efficiency concepts, that when
there are limited resources - as there always are - those resources should be used to promote the society's objectives as fully as possible. ―This is efficiency‖ (Lockheed and Hanushek, 1994, p.1). There are different perspectives to the
concept of efficiency and effectiveness of education systems. A recent work by
Mandl et al. (2008), outlines the conceptual framework and different methods
used for cross-country comparisons of the efficiency and effectiveness of public
86
confused with educational effectiveness, and at times the two terms are
(inappropriate) used interchangeably. They consider educational effectiveness
as a specific set of resources having a positive effect (or otherwise) on
achievement and, if so, how large this effect is. Clearly, ―since effectiveness does not directly compare resources or costs, what is effective is not necessarily what is most efficient‖ (p.2). They say that the analysis of efficiency and effectiveness is about the relationships between inputs, outputs and
outcomes, where the outcome is often linked to welfare or growth objectives
and therefore, may be influenced by multiple factors (Mandl et al., 2008, p.3).
They further point out that effectiveness shows the success of the resources
used in achieving the objectives set, which implies that efficiency and
effectiveness are not always easy to isolate. They contemplate that an
education system is said to be efficient if maximum output is obtained from a
given input, or if a given output is obtained with minimum possible input. They conclude, ―effectiveness is more difficult to assess than efficiency, since the outcome can be influenced political choice‖ (Mandl et al., 2008, p.3). Guoxing (2007) traces the evolution of SER and state that most of school effectiveness
research studies have traditionally come from the USA and Europe, in
particular, the Netherlands. These studies emerged in the mid-1960s. Since
then, there are three distinct but interrelated branches of school effectiveness
research, namely, (a) school effects research-I. e. Scientific properties of
school effects, e.g. the size of school effects, (b) effective schools research-I. e.
Process-oriented study of characteristics of effective schools, and (c) school
improvement research-focusing and limiting its test of specific models of
87
studies done in the context of school effectiveness research. Gist of some of
these studies as taken from Guoxing ( 2007, pp.6-12) are given below:
Jansen (1995) identified two generations of SER in developing countries: the
first generation emerged in the 1970s focusing on econometric estimation; the
second generation evolved in the 1980s using more sophisticated statistical
techniques such as Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Lockheed and Levin (1993)
argue that creating effective schools in developing countries requires
necessary inputs in terms of curriculum, instructional materials, quality time for
learning, and teaching practice promoting students active learning. Fuller and
Clarke (1994) review of SER studies showed significant positive associations
between academic achievement and school input as well as process. Similarly,
Hanushek (1995) finds that SER in developing countries has been much
concerned with the econometric notion of cost - effectiveness. Heneveld (1996)
propose a conceptual framework of school effectiveness (Heneveld 1994;
Heneveld and Craig 1996) which consists of an interrelated network of various
factors that influence student outcomes which are characterized in four ways;
participation, academic achievement, social skills and economic success.
Kellaghan and Greaney (2004) postulate that assessing and monitoring student
academic progress/achievement is considered an important factor in promoting
school effectiveness in both developed countries and developing countries.
From the perspectives of developing countries, Kellaghan and Greaney (1992;
2001;2004) have been the key proponents of singling out the use of
assessment / examination reforms to engineer change in the levels of
educational policy and teaching practice to enhance the quality. Scheerens (2000a; 2000b; 2001a), in a series of reviews comparing the findings of SER studies in
88
developing and developed countries, on behalf of the World Bank and UNESCO IIEP, draws three major conclusions (2001a: 361cited in Guoxing, 2007,p.12).
Considerably larger school-variation in developing than developed countries
A more consistent and stronger positive effect of material and human resource input factors in developing countries
Inconclusive and weak evidence on the effect of instructional factors that have received empirical support in industrialized countries.
The production function has been used as an important tool of economic
analysis in the neoclassical tradition (description at appendix 4-A). The
discussion on education economics has started between the late 1950s and
early 1960s with the developing conversation on human capital. The basis of
human capital lies in the theories of Theodore Schultz, who produced his ideas
of human capital in the early 1960s as a way of explaining the advantages of
investing in education to improve agriculture output. The contemporary
economic approach to education started developing from the late 1950s onwards with Jacob Mincer‘s application of human capital theory to the measurement of the economic return to education. Teixeira (2007) asserts that, Mincer‘s dissertation(finished in 1957 and published in the Journal of Political Economy in 1958) was the first analytical contribution to the development of
human capital theory, his research opened the way for very important work to
be carried out on patterns of lifetime earnings, labor force participation, and
investments in human capital, and his development and econometric estimation
of the human capital earnings function became a centerpiece of modern labor
89
developing a theory of investment in human capital, ―with an emphasis on empirical implications rather than on formal generalization‖ and is concerned with activities that influence future real income through the embedding of
resources in people,‖ this is called investing in human capital‖ (pp.49 and 9). He explains the concept that, they are called human capital, because people
cannot be separated from their knowledge, skills health or values in the way
they can be separated from their financial and physical assets. Building on the
human capital theory, other economists and other social scientists produced a
large body of empirical evidence determining the more time spent in school, the
higher the income of a person. This necessitated designing a model explaining
the relationship between educational output and school resources. This
resulted into developing an educational production function based on theory of
human capital. According to Glewwe and Kremer (2005), a useful assumption
to understand the impact of education policies of years of schooling and skills
learned, to employ in order that each household (in particular, the parents of
the child) maximizes, subject to constraints, a (life-cycle) utility function. They further contend that ―the constraints in the process or the production of learning, the impact of years of schooling and of skills obtained on the future
labor incomes of children, a life-cycle budget constraint, and perhaps some credit constraints‖ (p.11). The production function of learning is a structural relationship and these ideas developed into these educational production
functions :(Glewwe and Kremer, 2005, p.12)
A=a(S, Q, C, H, I) …… (1)
Where A is skills learned (achievement), S is years of schooling, Q is a factor
90
characteristics (including ―innate ability‖), H is a vector of household characteristics, and I am a vector of school inputs under the control of parents, such as children‘s daily attendance and purchases of textbooks and other school supplies.
Many researchers trace the origins of the production function approach to the
Coleman Report (1996) done in the United States to investigate equal
opportunity issues during the 1960s. The Coleman Report stirred up
considerable controversies by coming to the surprising conclusion that
variations in schools resources did not explain much of the variation in students‘ achievement. The majority of Education Production Function studies was conducted in the United States and tend to reinforce Coleman‘s most controversial finding, that variation in achievement is more closely tied to family
background than to school resources, although evidence from countries with
very low per capita income sometime suggest contexts where student
outcomes tend to be more sensible to the availability of school resources
(Gamoran and Long, 2006, cited in Nascimento, 2008, p.20). Despite several
criticisms about the methodologies used and the inferences made, that report is
even now considered the first major study of education production function
(Hanushek, 1986 and a reference point for both education production functions
(hereafter called EPF) and school effectiveness research (Levacic, 2005, cited
in Nascimento, 2008, p.19). Quoting Levacic (2005) Nascimento (2008)
contemplates that EPFs are an analogy made by economists between the
learning process and the production process that takes place in a firm: schools
are then seen as the place where educational resources (teachers, books,
91
an output, which is the student outcomes, normally expressed in terms of test
scores. However, there is criticism on EPF efficacy. Worthington (2001)
attributes four key reasons for educational production function failure. The first
questions the validity of the educational production function framework itself. It
is argued that many empirical studies are ad hoc in their selection of
methodology, and in particular, choose input and output variables that are at
odds with the production function approach it. The second centers on the
possibility that public policy does not have any measurable impact on
educational outcomes. The third follows from Mayston‘s (1996) argument that the lack of a positive relationship between educational outcomes and
educational expenditure is the result of schools balancing of demand-side considerations of ‗willingness to pay‘ for additional educational attainment against supply-side factors related to the genuine underlying production
function (Worthington, 2001, p.246).
He concludes: ―The associated econometric problems that follow from the neglect of the demand side transpires that one cannot legitimately interpret an
estimated single equation between test scores and expenditure per pupil as telling us directly about the true underlying education production function‖ (Mayston 1996, p. 141, cited in Worthington, 2001, p.246). The fourth touches
the assumption that the educational production function approach relies on an
assumption of efficiency. It is generally assumed that all institutions in a given
context are able to transform educational inputs into academic outputs at the
same rate. If this is not the case, and inefficiencies are present in the
educational process, then the empirical application of the conceptual model
92