Measuring and explaining organizational effectiveness of school districts: Evidence from a robust and conditional Benefit-of-the-Doubt approach

Abstract

This paper constructs an innovative approach to measure school district organizational effectiveness. We use the fully nonparametric Benefit-of-the-Doubt approach to construct a composite indicator which reduces subjectivity in choosing weights attached to different functions of school districts. The model is extended to reduce the influence of outliers (robust) and to account for the exogenous environment (conditional). We apply the suggested technique to unique and self-collected data from surveys and interviews taken from school board members and principals. We illustrate why accounting for respondent characteristics is crucial when evaluating school districts. Next, we analyze the obtained aggregate measures to identify which organizational structures, board characteristics and management styles are of importance for the organizational effectiveness of school districts.