Long-term effects of amalgamating upper secondary schools. A contribution to evaluation methodology

Sammendrag

Amalgamating public organisations is one of the most used strategies for improving welfare production in the Western world. The reformers expect that merging units will facilitate scale advantages leading to reduced overhead costs and increased specialisation. However, these expectations are often dashed by evaluation studies. This gap between the great expectations held by the reformers, and the evidence collected by the evaluators can be explained by way of evaluation methodology. Too often, the evaluations are conducted too early. This article is based on a longitudinal case study, and demonstrates that the perceived effects of the amalgamating of upper-secondary schools can change dramatically in the course of time. One conclusion is that longitudinal studies have methodological limitations, but they should still be conducted more often in evaluation research.