Education Resource Strategies

Introduction
Choose Your Scenario
Model District Cost Drivers

Elementary Schools
Class Size and Planning Time
Small Group Support
Individual Tutoring
Staffing Strategies

Secondary Schools
Class Size and Scheduling
Staffing Strategies

Professional Development
School-based PD
Individual Careers/Other PD

Compensation and Time
Teacher Compensation
Instructional Time

Reports and Results
Budget Summary
Per Pupil Costs

Research indicates that regularly dividing students into teacher-supported small groups, especially in literacy and math, allows more personalized and effective instruction. High performing schools allocate staff flexibly, providing scheduled, skilled-based support from resource teachers and staff at critical times throughout the day. Students are arranged in groups according to a specific concept or skill they are learning, and groupings may change throughout the year based on students' mastery of one concept or need for further support. Small Group Support can be a cost effective way of individualizing attention without reducing class sizes across the school or district.

Your base case data is shown below in the gray fields. DREAM assumes that teacher-supported small groups are not used at all in the base case. Please enter changes in the yellow redesigned boxes to understand how adding teacher-supported small groups impacts the number of staff required (as well as the overall budget) for the district.

Please note that you must specify the minutes per day, number of days, additional teachers per classroom, and the % of classrooms devoted to small group support.

small group support

base case

redesigned

number of minutes per day devoted to small groups

number of days per week devoted to small group support

number of additional teachers per small group class period

to what percentage of classrooms will small group instruction be provided?

k

1

2

3

4

5

base case

redesigned

additional teachers needed to support your small group instruction targets

k

1

2

3

4

5

total

teachers

base case redesigned difference

school system budget

ftes

estimated $

additional teachers from changes to class size and cpt

additional teachers from changes to small group support

additional teachers from changes to indiviudal tutoring

total additional teachers required

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This research was supported by the School Finance Redesign Project at the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education through funding by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grant No. 29252. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and are not intended to represent the project, center, university, or foundation.

This strategic resource allocation tool is designed to assist users in evaluating the costs of select educational program elements and alternatives. Neither ERS nor the School Finance Redesign Project endorses the use of any of the specific elements/alternatives contained in the tool, endorses the use of the elements/alternatives in the tool over other elements/alternatives, or guarantees the effectiveness of the tool elements/alternatives relative to improving student outcomes. Users of the tool bear sole responsibility for consequences associated with using the output of the tool and/or implementing the elements/alternatives in the tool.