Data envelopment analysis and an application

Assessing performance of companies is very important for not only management of the companies but also investors. Besides, observing the efficiency of different types of management system at different times is the key point for companies to survive in highly competitive market. Because of these reasons, efficiency and performance are the most important terms for a company.DEA is based on a linear programming technique and DEA aims to assess the relative performances of decision making units when there are multiple inputs and outputs which are measured on different scale in benchmarking progress. DEA is widely used in the literature due to its ease of use and interpretation compared to other methods, its ability to analyze in detail and having no strict assumption for parametric tests. DEA which is one of the non-parametric technique was used to assess the efficiency of secondary schools in our country. The reason of using DEA is the existence of multiple inputs such as student teacher ratio, average school and class size, and multiple outputs such as mathematics, science and reading scores, in educational system. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures student's skills and knowledge in mathematics, science and reading, ability to solve real life problems and ability to relate real life problems with their knowledge and skills, data is used in this analysis.Decision making units were compared using not only basic models but also advance models of DEA. Three basic topics were studied. First topic was measuring the efficiency of secondary schools in Turkey in 2003 using DEA. Second topic was to compare the efficiency of secondary schools in 25 countries between 2003 and 2006. Last topic was to compare the efficiency of secondary schools in regions of Turkey between 2003 and 2006.