ASSESSING THE EFFICIENCY OF OKLAHOMA PUBLIC SCHOOLS: A DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS

In this paper, the efficiency of the Oklahoma school districts using two different specifications is measured by the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. To determine the possible sources of inefficiency, a second stage Tobit regression was employed. Here, the specification of the inefficiency models includes (1) environmental variables that school districts have no control over (e.g., the percentage of students in special education and the poverty rate in the district) and (2) non-traditional inputs that school districts do have control over (e.g., teachers’ salaries) but were not included in the first stage DEA. The findings of the models are compared and both suggest that the key factors affecting efficiency measures among the Oklahoma school districts are primarily the students ’ characteristics and family environment