The conventional concept of educational efficiency, adapted from the technical-industrial sector, is inappropriate for public schools. In the technical industrial sector, there is widespread agreement about the desired outcome: profit. Yet there is very little public agreement about the proper goals of schooling. Even if agreement on goals could be achieved, techniques for measuring school outcomes are primitive and imprecise. There is also little agreement about what is the best educational process. Finally, it is difficult to measure school efficiency since the influence of outside environmental and socioeconomic factors on achievement is so significant. It would be more useful to substitute "institutional responsiveness" as the measure of educational efficiency. This goal could then be pursued through greater practical reliance on political processes and the market mechanism, such as in an educational voucher system. In the face of so many unknown factors about educational efficiency, it might be best to allow educational consumers to choose schools that embody their own definitions of efficiency and concentrate on their own preferred educational goals. As a complement to such a system, new personnel incentives would also enhance school efficiency. (Author/JM)