Reviews of relevant research on the application of operations research and statistics that appeared prior to 1980 are compared with those appearing in the early 1980s. In summary, both explicit and implicit users of mathematics in educational administration see it as a tool that essentially brings order and generalizability to administrative data. It is used at the stage of weighing quantitatively various alternatives that had been devised as possible responses to a problem. The last third of the paper borrows from the field of mathematics education and explores using mathematics for posing problems earlier in the problem-solving process. Suggested for posing or reposing problems are the following mathematical practices: (1) estimation/approximation; (2) internal and external views of a thing; and (3) the particular and the specific. In the field of mathematics education, mathematization takes on a different character from that derived from the physical sciences. This alternative view looks upon mathematization as the process by which something happens in an individual or a field rather than the evidence that it has happened. Examples of mathematical operations such as iteration, enumeration, relation, and transformation applied to educational administration are provided. Thinking "mathematically" is proposed as a way to encourage possible generation of more creative equivalent alternatives. Appended are 24 references. (MLF)