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

Opportunities exist at the secondary school level to improve the quality of instruction for all students. The District Resource Allocation Modeler (DREAM) provides you with class size, scheduling, and staffing options that create smaller class sizes and lower teaching loads to foster more personalized learning environments, enhance core academic focus, and increase opportunities for common planning time and coaching.

Class Size and Scheduling — High performing schools create more time for academic subjects and schedule longer blocks of time on core academic areas. Research suggests that students should spend at least 90 minutes per day on literacy as well as on math instruction. The scheduling scenarios presented on the Scheduling Strategies page provide a variety of ways to lengthen instructional blocks, increase planning periods, and reduce teaching loads and teacher-pupil ratios. All of these conditions have the potential to improve student performance in your district. Tied to improvements through scheduling are changes in class size. Significant reductions in class size around core academic subjects, although expensive, are linked to student performance improvements. Conversely, increasing class size during non-core academic instruction can provide cost savings to reinvest in other district priorities and strategies.
Staffing Strategies — High performing schools explicitly shape the work responsibilities of all staff positions so that every staff member supports the school's instructional design. These schools minimize the number of non-instructional staff and synchronize the work of their non-classroom instructional staff with the work of classroom teachers. The Staffing Strategies page provides you with an opportunity to experiment with staffing levels for non-classroom teacher positions in order to support the instructional goals and designs within your district. You can also adjust Administrative, Instructional Support, and Pupil Support staff positions and compensation as a way of funding other initiatives you might be exploring.

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We encourage you to use this model and to share it with anyone else who is dedicated to improving student performance through the strategic use of school resources. Selling this tool is expressly prohibited. See Terms of Use.

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.