Evaluations that consider the cost of educational programs: The contribution of high quality studies

Cost studies are program evaluations that judge program worth by relating program costs to program benefits. There are three sets of strategies: cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness, and cost-utility analysis, although the last appears infrequently. We searched relevant databases to identify 102 cost studies in education and then reduced the set to 30 using eight criteria. We found that these studies contributed to understanding program effects by meeting the four evaluation purposes identified by Mark et al. (2000). Cost studies (1) provide evidence of the worth of educational spending at the macro and individual program levels, information that is not provided by other evaluation approaches; (2) they provide direction for program improvement that differs from recommendations based solely on effect sizes; (3) they contribute to knowledge development by constructing and testing models that link spending to student learning; and (4) they can lead to the rewriting of regulations to make programs more efficient