17
We incorporate two aspects of personnel stability in this study, as developed in an earlier
analysis (O’Toole and Meier 2003b). Managerial stability is simply the number of years the
superintendent has been employed by the district in any capacity.
12
Teacher stability is measured
as the percentage of teachers employed by the district during the preceding year who continue to
work for the district. For both measures, then, higher scores mean more stability. Data on
managerial stability were obtained from the survey respondents; data on teacher stability were
provided by the Texas Education Agency. While these measures are treated as stability features
here and in the subsequent discussion, they can also be considered aspects of management: what
is usually referred to as personnel management. While not totally under the control of school
district leaders, these variables are susceptible to influence by the individuals who make decisions
about how such organizations are run. In a real sense, therefore, all six variables tap aspects of
public management.
Control Variables
12
The measure as a result taps both stability and capacity — the latter in the sense of
knowledge about the organization.
Any assessment of public program performance must control for both task difficulty and
program resources. For school districts, neither of these types of elements are under the
substantial control of the districts themselves, and therefore they can be considered key parts of
the vector of environmentally influenced X forces represented in the model. Fortunately, a well-
developed literature on educational production functions (Hanushek 1996; Hedges and Greenwald
1996) can be used for guidance. Eight variables, all commonly used, are included in our analysis
– three measures of task difficulty and five measures of resources.
Convention