Analyzing the Relationship between Financial Recourses and Educational Performance of Tehran's Educational Districts

This paper mainly tries to study the relationship between financial resources and educational performance of the City of Tehran’s educational districts during 2000-2006. Statistical data were collected from educational districts and analyzed by appropriate statistical techniques (correlation analysis and multiple regressions). The main results of this study are as follows: (1) Educational performance trend was not optimal in the educational districts during the study period and in certain courses, especially high school courses, the performance quality was very poor. (2) Allocation of resources and facilities, especially number of teachers and financial resources per student has relatively developed. (3) Regression analyses in the framework of ‘educational production function’ for evaluating the factors which influence performance quality of the educational districts’ show following three (a) in the primary school stage, financial resources per head, teachers’ salaries and education, student-teacher ratio, and female teachers’ share positively affect the statistics of educational performance quality of the educational districts while the size of the schools negatively affects it, (b) in the secondary school stage, all the variables except for ‘teachers’ education’ did not have positive effects, and finally (c) in the high school stage, the most variables affected differently from both previous stages and were against the theoretical expectations. Therefore the degree of optimality in using resources and facilities decreases in higher stages. Extra educational human resources (teachers) resulting from input-orientated financial resources allocation method as well as concentrated decision-making system are two of the main reasons of allocation inefficiency in the City of Tehran’s educational districts.