Public k-12 education as an industrial process: The school as a factory

Abstract

In this paper we argue that public education in the United States is essentially an industrial process organized to produce a finished product. Rising government spending on public education, and the lack of an established rubric to evaluate school performance or accountability deems our analysis relevant and timely. Viewing education as an industrial process will allow policy-makers to obtain more accurate measures of costs and develop appropriate funding mechanisms. Furthermore, regulators may use managerial accounting concepts, particularly activity based costing, to establish future school performance evaluation rubrics.