COLLEGE PARK—August 11, 2011- A recent publication titled “The Productivity of Elected and Appointed Officials: The Case of School Superintendents” aims at measuring elected and appointed school superintendents through a solid and critical quality measures systems established through rigorous research; the academic performance of children in school.

The publication and study, written by Optimal Solution Group, LLC’s (Optimal’s) Mark Partridge and former Florida State University (FSU’s) professor Tim Sass, provided a brief history of research work undertaken to measure efficiency of governments run by elected versus appointed officials for the past 40 years. According to the paper, past research efforts have measured expenditures of municipal and county governments to determine efficiency. However, this study focused on the actions and academic progress of children functioning in schools under elected and appointed superintendents.

The conclusion of the study found no consistent difference in the performance of elected and appointed superintendents. The study utilized data from 67 school districts in Florida and used both instrumental variable methods and panel data techniques to nullify selection bias issues.  The full paper regarding the study, its methodologies, and findings can be found via SpringerLink.

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Optimal Solutions Group, LLC

Founded in 2000, Optimal Solutions Group, LLC is a nonpartisan public policy research and technical assistance firm that stands out through its quantitative expertise and innovative approaches to provide rigorous, data-driven research and technical assistance to government agencies, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropic foundations. Located at the University of Maryland’s M Square Research Park in College Park, Optimal is a leader in driving real-time public policy research. Optimal has 60+ employees including multidisciplinary researchers with backgrounds in business, communication, economics, education, health policy, psychology, public policy, sociology, statistics, and urban planning. Optimal has four research centers: Health, Education, Housing, and Workforce Development and Social Policy.