N RECENT YEARS, public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports, many of them critical of current school policy.' These policy documents have added to persistent and long-standing concerns about the cost, effectiveness, and fairness of the current school structure, and have made schooling once again a serious public issue. As in the past, however, any renewed interest in education is likely to be short-lived, doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in. This frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools. Although the educational process has been extensively researched, clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive.2 There exists, however, a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy: Schools differ dramatically in "quality,"

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2725865.pdf

The Economics of Schooling: Production and Efficiency in Public Schools.

In an effort to improve the quality of schools, governments around the world have dramatically increased the resources devoted to them. By concentrating on inputs and ignoring the incentives within schools, the resources have yielded little in the way of general improvement in student achievement. This paper provides a review of the United States and international evidence on the effectiveness of such input policies. It then contrasts the impact of resources with that of variations in teacher quality that are not systematically related to school resources. Finally, alternative performance incentive policies are described.

The Failure of Input-based Schooling Policies

Conventional teacher education programs follow an apprenticeship model and, in so doing, aspire to provide student teachers with pedagogical skills and techniques derived from a preexisting body of...

Teaching Student Teachers to Reflect

In an effort to improve the quality of schools, governments around the world have dramatically increased the resources devoted to them. By concentrating on inputs and ignoring the incentives within schools, the resources have yielded little in the way of general improvement in student achievement. This paper provides a review of the US and international evidence on the effectiveness of such input policies. It then contrasts the impact of resources with that of variations in teacher quality that are not systematically related to school resources. Finally, alternative performance incentive policies are described.

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The failure of input-based schooling policies

* Thinking About Education in a Different Way * Myths About Achievement and Aptitude * Other Myths About American Schools * Why Now? * Poor Ideas for Reform * Real Problems of American Education * Toward the Improvement of Education * Fundamentals of School Improvement: Research and Compassion

The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools

Richard J. Murnane and David K. Cohen use the framework of microeconomics to account for the short lives of most merit pay plans. They demonstrate that teaching is not an activity that satisfies the conditions under which performance-based pay is an efficient method of compensating workers. They then show that merit pay plans survive in a few school districts, in part because the districts are special and in part because the merit pay plans are quite different from conventional notions of performance-based pay.

Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem: Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive

Policy researchers have traditionally assumed that applied research produces authoritative and socially relevant knowledge and affects policy by affecting discrete decisions. The authors investigate these assumptions in the light of case materials from educational policy research and find them lacking in explanatory force. They suggest that, since premises about the relationship between applied research and policy are faulty, the traditional rationale for social science in the service of the state may not be adequate. The authors propose an alternative conception of policy research based on a notion of the research process as a form of discourse about the nature of society and its problems.

Reforming Educational Policy With Applied Social Research

Once upon a time, students of American politics believed that policy turned out as intended. But they have recently concluded that intentions are an inconsistent guide to results. Scrutiny of the effects of policy has increased: government agencies study the effects of welfare payments on work habits and income, of school reform on students' academic performance, and of environmental regulation on air and water quality. Social scientists scrap about such issues, and their work is followed fitfully by government and the press. These new concerns have altered the content of newspapers, the management of social agencies and the methods of social research. Even the character of public-service training programs in universities has changed.

Policy and Organization: The Impact of State and Federal Educational Policy on School Governance

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Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem: Understanding Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive.

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David K. Cohen

Papers

Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem: Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive

Reforming Educational Policy With Applied Social Research

Policy and Organization: The Impact of State and Federal Educational Policy on School Governance

Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem: Understanding Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive.

The merits of merit pay