Bureaucracy and organizational performance: Causality arguments about public schools

One key policy dispute in the school choice debate concerns whether the education bureaucracy is a cause or a consequence of poor performance. This dispute is striking because both sides accept the same neo-institutionalist organization theory. This article uses a large panel of school districts to address the dispute. The evidence suggests that poor performance results in a growing bureaucracy not vice versa. Further evidence then shows that the growth in bureaucracy is associated in an increase in teachers and smaller class sizes; in short, bureaucracy increases as schools take actions that are linked to improved performance.