Comments on Professor Alkin's Paper Entitled 'Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of Instructional Programs.'

Evaluation of the ratio of cost to benefit of instruction must play an important part in the formation of a public policy on education. However, it is doubtful if evaluation is sufficiently developed to play such a role, because evaluation is based on student responses to test items which contain an indefinite bias and cannot be accepted as reliable data. A more reliable theory of test writing must be developed before evaluation can perform an important role in the making of public policy. Related documents are EA 002 475 and EA 002 534. (MLF)