In theory, not-for-profit organizations will be characterized by higher production costs per unit of output than for-profit producers of otherwise-identical goods/services, since profit maximization implies cost minimization per unit of output; breaking even does not imply cost minimization and, indeed, may imply inflated costs. We explore the…

In the spring of 2005, the author, the retiring president of EDUCAUSE, was asked to be the keynote speaker at the EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference. The conference theme was "Winds of Change: Charting the Course for Technology in Challenging Times." What that brought to his mind was the era of the great sailing ships of the eighteenth and…

Today, administrators must assume a different mindset if public schools are to remain viable and functional. Changing populations resulting in heterogeneous communities, the diversity of community values, and the finite resources available to meet the infinite desires of a demanding constituency have created the necessity for political acumen on…

Using Indonesian data, this paper evaluates the impact of school type on the academic achievement of junior secondary school students (grades 7-9). Public school graduates, after controlling for a wide variety of characteristics, score 0.17 to 0.3 standard deviations higher on the national exit exam than their privately schooled peers. This…

Each of the divisions of the Office of Educational Accountability in the District of Columbia Public Schools was required to submit an evaluation design that would be used to measure division accomplishments at the end of the school year. Since the Division of Research and Evaluation had already completed the development of the Planning,…

The operations of an institution can be viewed from three perspectives: (1) the "actual operating measurement" such as income and expenditures of a cost center at a point in time; (2) the "criterion" which reflects the established policy for a time period; and (3) the "efficiency level" wherein a balance between input and output is defined.…

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for the evaluation of online bibliographic retrieval services and provides an example of its use with the Educational Information System for Ontario (EISO). A systems approach, incorporating traditional categories of input, output, process, and feedback, is used to develop the model; in its…

This paper deals with two experiments whose purposes are to investigate the linguistic competence of young children and their receptivity to adult speech. In the free response experiment, imperative sentences were presented to 1 1/2- to 2 1/2-year-olds. The sentences were minimal (a single noun), telegraphic, or full adult sentences. The youngest…

Experimental design has only limited utility inthe field of educational evaluation and, in general, the methodology of the former does not equal the methodology of the latter; in fact, experimental design plays a limited role in the total framework of educational evaluation. Experimental design does have potential utility in the areas of input and…

This report presents severl alternative methods which may be employed by local authorities in identifying likely prospects for local industrialization, and describes a specialized input-output technique to define inter-industry relations and inter-regional relations of industries. This technique is applied, for illustrative purposes, to three…

Cost-effectiveness represents an attempt to apply one methodology to decision-making in education. Three recent trends in the behavioral and social sciences are apparent: Rationalization in the decision process, institutionalization of research in education, and the beginning of a general theory of organizational behavior. The problem posed is how…

The broad objective of this investigation was to explore the potential and applicability of automatic methods for the indexing of drug-related information appearing in English natural language text and to find out what can be learned about automatic indexing in general from the experience. More specific objectives were the development,…

The basis of the measurable institutional objectives approach to management by objectives is the college's educational philosophy. The output measures used are the units completed and grade averages. It is recognized, however, that some student learnings and support program objectives are currently unmeasurable. The Sample Class Plan for…