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1 Educational Expenditures and School Efficiency 1 (1947)

handle is hein.tera/eduexpesce0001 and id is 1 raw text is: EDUCATIONAL EXPENPITURES ANDl SCHOOL EFFICIENCY

There is a tendency today to overemphasize the importance of ex-
penditures to educational efficiency. High expenditures are frequently in-
terpreted to mean good schools, and low expenditures the contrary. Such
assumptions are far from trustworthy, for states may have either inferior
schools at high cost or superior schools at moderate expense.
Sometimes the importance attached to educational expenditures
reaches surprising proportions, as in the following statement of the National
Education Association:
Education Pays
The volume of economic activity
in the various states rises or
falls with ty level of educational
expenditure.
The implication seems to be that economic activity within a state
depends upon the amount of money spent for schools. Wealthy states can and
do spend more for education than poor states, but to attribute their wealth
to this fact is to confuse cause and effect. Expensive schools will not
make a poor state rich: they will neither increase its natural resources
nor transform it into a highly industrialized community.
The usual method of evaluating a. public service is first to analyze
the scope and quality of benefits and then to determine whether the value of
the service is commensurate with the cost involved. But many educational
benefits cannot be analyzed at the state level, rendering this method only
partially applicable to the evaluation of state school systems. Instead of
analyzing benefits directly it is necessary to measure them indirectly by use
of general statistical criteria.
/ EA Handbook, August, 1946, p. 296. Based upon Education: An Investment
in People, United States Chamber of Commerce, 1944-1945.

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