This paper describes a performance assessment of Portuguese secondary
schools using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The assessment adopts two
perspectives: a society perspective where schools are viewed as promoting
students achievement given student characteristics in terms of academic
abilities and socio-economic background; and an educational authorities
perspective where schools are viewed as transforming a set of resources
(including student academic abilities, socio-economic background, and also
school resources, such as teachers) into students' achievement. Two types of
DEA analysis are performed for each perspective: one using an output oriented
model allowing factor weights to vary freely from school to school and another
using a model that restricts factor weights to be equal for all schools. The first
model is well suited for identifying inefficient schools, whereas the latter is
best suited for improving discrimination between efficient schools when
pursuing the identification of benchmarks. Our sample comprised a small
number of schools and therefore the results obtained are mainly illustrative of
the potential of the method. Future research will explore the use of this method
for the assessment of schools at a national leve
