For years we’ve felt like the lone voice in the night decrying the fact that public education didn’t seem interested in efficiency. “Bang for the Buck,” “Cost-Effectiveness,” call it what you will, it just wasn’t there.

But, Education Week reports with the reality of tight budgets finally facing many in the education world, some are starting to talk about how:

“It's a sea change that we have people saying we need to be cost-effective, not just effective," as Lori Taylor, an education researcher with Texas A&M University, recently put it to EdWeek.

To be sure, such thinking is in its infancy in Kentucky. As we reported a few days ago, the state doesn’t even have a handle, so far, on getting us accurate reporting about how much individual schools in the state spend in total on education.

Until that reporting gets a whole lot better, figuring out which programs really get good bang for the buck remains a distant dream. But, with those education dollars getting tighter and tighter, it’s a dream that better come to fruition, and soon.