Education productivity research: An update and assessment of its role in education finance reform. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

This article begins with a critical review of alternative strategies currently in use to study educational productivity. These unfolding research programs are considered in the light of increasing public demands for improvement of productivity in education. A critique is offered of the dominant conception of the education production process that undergirds many of these studies, and alternative conceptions are offered. The effects of efforts to improve productivity are examined in the context of each of these different conceptions. The article concludes by advocat-ing a new line of research designed to generate insight into more fundamental aspects of education production processes. This new type of productivity research places greater emphasis than is customary on the classroom as the unit of analysis. A significant paradox is plaguing efforts to apply productivity-related research to the re-form of K-12 education-financing systems. On the one hand, there is consensus that existing education production research has been largely unsuccessful at revealing th