Education Resource Strategies

Introduction
Guiding Resource Principles
How To Use This Tool

Accounts and Scenarios
Logging Into Your Account
Choosing a Scenario

Quick Start
Two-Minute Customization
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

The ERS District Resource Allocation Modeler (DREAM) helps school districts see how the strategic use of resources — people, time and dollars — can impact the key levers of student performance.

DREAM guides you through a series of educational practices aimed at supporting and improving instruction. There are no right answers. The Tool's power lies in presenting the key levers for success: high quality teachers with the support and flexibility to meet individual student needs in core academic areas and in allowing you to adjust resources and model options to make these conditions attainable.

Getting Started

DREAM is designed to let each user move at his or her own pace. The tool is pre-populated with representative data for school districts of different types and sizes. You may use this representative data or enter data from your district. The more data you enter, the closer the results will be to your district. When specific data from your district is not available, DREAM will make assumptions based on your type of district and still allow you to model tradeoffs.

If you only have a few minutes and would like to see:

The impact of adjusting key budget levers in a typical $750MM urban district, select the District Cost Drivers option from the menu on the left.
A high-level look at the impact of adjusting the key budget levers in your district, select Two-Minute Customization from the menu. After inputting your district data, select the District Cost Drivers option from the menu and experiment with different high level scenarios for the use of resources.

If you have time to access the full benefits of the tool, simply walk through the tool using the menu on the left or use the "back" and "next" buttons, and follow the instructions on each page. Additional detail on the individual pages and on navigating this tool may be found on the pages themselves as well as on the How To Use this Tool page.

Whichever path you take, we encourage all users to take a moment to review the contents of the Guiding Resource Principles page to understand the rationale and educational research underlying DREAM.

To get started, click the appropriate link above, or click the next button to continue.

two-minute customization | district cost drivers | privacy policy | terms of use

Copyright © 2005-10 Education Resource Strategies. All rights reserved.

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.