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ABSTRACT This paper evaluates the efficiency of a sample of Spanish secondary schools, paying particular attention to the theoretical specification of the measurement model and to the ex post analysis of the results, aspects which, despite being of undoubted importance, have nevertheless received little attention in the previous literature on the subject. The paper tries to demonstrate that, in order for a study of this nature to have the minimum solvency, it is the special characteristics of the education production process that must form the basic guidelines to be followed by the researcher. The paper also highlights the characteristics that
differentiate the most efficient schools from the least efficient, and emphasises the importance of completing the information supplied by the quantitative methods of educational evaluation (such as data envelopment analysis), with data of a qualitative nature obtained by way of surveys directed at the pupils (customers) and the school decision-makers.
Introduction
Over the past 15 years, the economics of education has increasingly directed its efforts towards the study of a topic that had previously received only limited attention, namely the microeconomic evaluation of the internal efficiency of schools, principally those operating in the public sector. In this context, the studies in which the estimations are made using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method stand out.1 However, the majority of the works produced to date have concentrated essentially on the measurement methodology itself, to the detriment of a discussion about whether or not this methodology is appropriate for the task and of the care that must be taken when the subject under study is the education sector. This situation, which may be due to the fact that most of these papers have been produced by statisticians and researchers from Schools of Business Studies and Management Science, has given rise, in practice, to the construction of measurement models that are hard to justify from a conceptual point of view, given that they are constructed essentially in function of available data, and whose main objective, as expressly recognised, is to illustrate the most appropriate mathematical treatment in each case.
The analysis of the specific characteristics presented by the education services production process and of the restrictions that these characteristics impose upon the measurement of the efficiency...