An Estimation of Standards for Public School Expenditures

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how cross- sectional observations of expenditures by school districts within a particular state's jurisdiction may be used to estimate efficiency standards for public school expenditures. The standards are estimated using frontier regression techniques which adjust for the differential levels of efficiency of resource usage across different school districts. Based on these standards we estimated that inefficiencies in Missouri's school districts' actual expenditures cost the state an average of about $513.00 per student (or 17% of the current average total expenditure) for the fiscal year 1990-91