Balanced Scorecards and Management Data
Frederick M. Hess, Jon Fullerton | Center for Education Policy Research
February 01, 2009
  • Print
  • Download

Successful organizations, public and private, monitor their operations--extensively and intensively. UPS and FedEx know where every package is in transit. Dell is famous for running an extremely tight supply chain, pushing the cost of holding inventory onto its suppliers by having a crystal clear understanding of its immediate requirements and only ordering what it needs when it needs it. Baseball teams employ sophisticated statistical analyses in making personnel decisions.

Compare such approaches to what has long prevailed in public education. In 2007, Michelle Rhee, then the new chancellor of the Washington, D.C. Public Schools, reported that millions of dollars worth of textbooks and supplies had been moldering, unnoticed, in a warehouse for months and years. Few districts understand their true costs of recruiting a new teacher and principals have little idea what their schools' actual budgets are. . .

Download file Click here to view this study as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.

Frederick M. Hess is the director of education policy studies at AEI. Jon Fullerton is executive director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.

About the Author

 

Frederick M.
Hess
  • An educator, political scientist, and author, Frederick M. Hess studies a range of K-12 and higher education issues. He is the author of influential books on education including The Same Thing Over and Over, Education Unbound, Common Sense School Reform, Revolution at the Margins, and Spinning Wheels, and pens the Education Week blog "Rick Hess Straight Up."  His work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, New York Times and National Review. He has edited widely-cited volumes on education philanthropy, stretching the school dollar, the impact of education research, and No Child Left Behind.  He serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, on the Review Board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education, and on the Boards of Directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS, and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University, and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum.

    Follow AEI Education Policy on Twitter


  • Email: rhess@aei.org

  • Assistant Info

    Name: Rebecca King
    Phone: 202-862-5904
    Email: Rebecca.King@aei.org
Show More | See Full Profile
AEI on Facebook