ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an education production function where student performance is a function of the school system's environment and various policies and resource allocations. A vast literature has designated a variety of education production functions whereby the outputs of school systems can be evaluated relative to their inputs. The chapter includes substantively weighted analytical techniques (SWAT) to distinguish between public agencies that are "pretty good" at their job and those that are excellent. The process uses a SWAT technique to alter the focus to progressively better performance, and can be used in a wide variety of public policy and public management situations. The qualitative SWAT technique can be exploited to highlight differences between the merely good performers and the truly stellar performers. The chapter also presents bureaucracies which are heterogeneous and highly differentiated creatures. It discusses additional elements of organizational performance that can be assessed in a similar manner as SWAT.
