ABSTRACT
The improvement of both the learning environment and academic performance are two major conventional requests by the public for their schools. Due to the introduction of huge quantities of related information and the urgent pressure from competition in the global market, the holistic concept of “school efficiency” has been developed (DeRoche 1987; Fidler and Bowles 1989; Reynolds and Cuttance 1992). The concept of school efficiency emphasizes the problem-solving competency of individual schools and the improvement of instructional efficiency (David 1989; White 1989; Cheng 1993). For example, Morris and Young (1976) observed that school management bears intense pressure to present acceptable statistics of educational productivity to satisfy the concerns of education consumers. Critical and objective evaluations do have some strengths: they empirically examine schooling production, sort out accurate feedback for further improvement, and point out clear and objective performance criteria of school efficiency. However, a commonly agreed-on definition of school efficiency has not been achieved due to different theoretical bases, research methodologies, evaluation models, and interpretations. In such circumstances, the presentation of a new evaluation model or research paper is a difficult challenge (Fitz-Gibbon 1994). Related professionals consider the design of an evaluation instrument and the formulation of its criteria to be an important field that merits research and development efforts. In order to cultivate better school efficiency, it is believed that the development of a more appropriate monitoring system to supervise educational performance is urgently needed (Fitz-Gibbon 1994).
