Cost Analysis and Decision Making in Education

Abstract

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Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Early Reading Programs: A Demonstration With Recommendations for Future Research

“…When they do make decisions based on evidence, they typically rely only on evidence of effectiveness. Tsang (1997), Levin (2001Levin ( , 2011, Levin and Belfield (2015), Levin and McEwan (2001), and Harris (2009), have argued that both costs and effects must be evaluated when considering educational interventions. By selecting programs with the highest effectiveness relative to their costs, education decision makers could improve the productivity of education, perhaps by large magnitudes.…”

The Real Issue in School Funding: An Analysis of Increasing Government School Expenditure and Declining Performance

“…This has not been helped by considerable debate over what constitutes outcome or output measures. Second is the problem that there is often little desire for cost‐effectiveness analysis from policy‐makers, who would prefer to concentrate on politically popular programs (Tsang 1997; Harris 2009). For example, as has been illustrated here and elsewhere, class size reductions are often politically popular, but look like poor policy when costs and benefits are analysed (Chingos 2010).…”

Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Practice

“…Other considerations may determine feasibility. It is important to assess whether the resources or ingredients required to implement a particular intervention would be easily available at comparable costs in the decision maker's jurisdiction (Tsang, 1997). If, for example, an intervention required the employment of additional specialists in reading and the decision maker was aware of a local shortage of such individuals, he or she might anticipate that local costs would be proportionately higher than the national average, and would therefore result in a less favorable cost-effectiveness ratio.…”

“…Strong arguments have been made that costs also need to be taken into account (Harris, 2009), but the criterion of cost-effectiveness is rarely used and is largely unknown among evaluation specialists (Clune, 2002;Hummel-Rossi & Ashdown, 2002;Levin, 2002). This situation exists despite the development of methods for applying cost-effectiveness analysis to education almost four decades ago (Levin, 1975;Levin & McEwan, 2001;Tsang, 1997).…”