The Function of Operations Research Specialists in Large Urban School Districts

The high cost of public education has stimulated interest in applying the techniques of operations research and systems analysis to the management of schools. These applications are generally intended to promote greater efficiency in school operations and insure more effective use of educational resources. Due to the sociopolitical nature of public elementary and secondary educational institutions, the role of the operations research (OR) specialist-systems analyst in the education sector might be considered different from his counterpart in the military and industrial sectors. The function of the OR specialist in a large urban school district is particularly affected and influenced by political action groups, both in the school itself, e.g., teacher organizations, and by the community. Yet it is in these large urban districts where problems are most serious and the skills of the OR specialist-systems analyst are in greatest need. An attempt is made to demonstrate the role of the OR specialist in large urban school districts by using a problem situation which concerned itself with the politically sensitive question of developing an alternative to the fixed step salary schedule. A model is developed and analyzed, showing in a scenario fashion the functions of the OR specialist. The highly political nature of certain school district planning problems, such as salary evaluation, strongly suggests that the OR specialist in school districts be highly skilled in working with political action groups and possess communications skills to articulate various aspects of the planning effort, in addition to possessing the usual mathematical competencies.