学校规模扩大对“生均成本、教育质量”影响的复杂性——基于美国学者研究的文献综述

Complexity of Impacting of School Scale Expansion on Cost of per Student and Educational Quality——A Study Based on the Literature Review of American Scholars

教育资源的稀缺性作为教育发展不可回避的事实,促使"以有限资源获得最大效益"成为美国教育决策者关注的焦点。相关学者以规模经济模型为主导,对美国基础教育学校规模经济效益问题进行了长期研究,发现学校规模扩大并不一定能促使"生均成本下降"和"教育质量提升",学校规模经济效益的产生具有很强的不确定性。其原因在于教育活动与经济生产具有本质差异,教育活动中"学校管理成本、人口密度、学生交通成本、社会阶层、年级水平、出勤率、教师资源、师生精神面貌、学生纪律、家校关系等"多重中介变量的综合影响需要被重视。因此,未来该领域研究将进一步提升方法论的科学性和多元性,构建符合教育发展实际的系统理论模型,从而更加严谨科学地解释学校规模与生均成本、教育质量之间不稳定的曲线关系。美国学者的研究为我国后撤点并校时代城镇大规模学校和乡村小规模学校的教育质量提升以及城乡义务教育均衡发展提供了有益思路。

The scarcity of educational resources, as an unavoidable fact, makes the issue of ＂aximizing utility of limited resources＂ be the focus of attention for American policy- makers. Many researchers have been focusing on the ＂Economies of scale of basic education＂ by adopting economics of scale model for a long time. They found that the expansion of school scale did not necessarily enhance the economics of scale or educational quality, which means that the emergence of ＂economics of school scale＂ showed strongly uncertain- ty. The reason was that there was essential diversity between education and economical ac- tivities. The combined influence of many intervening variable such as school administration cost, population density, student transportation cost, students＂ social stratum, grade, atten- dance rate, teacher resource, mental attitude, discipline, families-school connection etc, should be highly emphasized. Thus, the methodology will be more scientific and multiple, the systematical theoretical model needs be made in this field to fit to the educational development, which could help to explain the uncertain curl relationship between school scale, average student cost and educational quality. The studies of American scholars provides beneficial thoughts for the issues of quality enhancement of super-large school and small rural schools, as well as balanced development of compulsory education in China.