Interdependencies among educational inputs and resource allocation in classrooms

While traditional research dealing with the allocation of educational resources has been concerned primarily with the distribution of fiscal resources at the state and school district level, it is becoming increasingly important to understand more about the distribution of resources once they reach the school and classroom. This article reports efforts to develop and test an economic model of the allocation of teacher resources within classrooms. The empirical analysis was based on pupil-specific observation data drawn from a sample of 13 fifth-grade math classrooms. Results indicate that variation in resource-allocation practices within and among fifth-grade math classrooms has a systematic qualitythat lends itself to an economic analysis.