Top-Heavy? Exploring the Allocative Efficiency of Small School Districts

• In Event: 66.047 - Policy Considerations in Funding Public Schools: Parental Investments, Publicly Funded Vouchers, and School District Size

Abstract

Are small districts unavoidably top-heavy and inefficient? This analysis uses administrative data on students, staff and spending to estimate the technical and allocative efficiency of Texas public school districts during the 2013-14 school year. Our results suggest that small districts are no more likely to overuse administrators than to overuse teachers, and that there is no relationship between school district size and the degree of either technical or allocative inefficiency once other likely determinants of inefficiency are taken into account. Furthermore, we find no evidence that reducing the share of district resources devoted to administration would enhance school district efficiency. The results are robust to alternative definitions of labor input and the inclusion or exclusion of very large school districts.

Authors

• Lori L. Taylor, Texas A&M University

• Shawna Grosskopf, Oregon State University

• Kathy Hayes