Disaggregating Education Production

A particular weakness of the education production function literature is that production is measured after a long series of treatments have been administered and reflects the effects of aggregation. This study meets a need to extend the perspective of this literature to a disaggregated view.  We directed our inquiry toward a traditional set of production stages: the reading assignment, the lecture, after the lecture study and preparation for the exam.   Our experimental design was constructed to measure student performance before and after each stage of production.  We found that production varied significantly across stages.  The reading assignment and lecture stages were productive.  The post lecture stage exhibited negative but insignificant productivity.  The test preparation stage also exhibited negligible productivity.