Politics, bureaucrats, and schools
- 54(6), Nov-Dec 1994, p.551-58
Will reducing bureaucracy improve education? According to Kevin B. Smith and Kenneth J. Meier, few ideas have swept the nation with such fervor as the proposal that if school systems would adopt public choice reforms student performance would improve. The authors reflect on Chubb and Moe's thesis calling for an elimination of bureaucracy and its harmful restraints. However, Smith and Meier use a precise measure of bureaucracy and find that bureaucracy is not related to three different measures of student performance. Their position is that bureaucracies develop because school systems need administrators and administrative capacity to function effectively. Reducing bureaucracy will impose administrative tasks on