Academic Return on Investment

Investment and Operation Expenditures Revisited

 in Theory  tagged Academic Return on Investment / Budgeting Model / Return on Investment by

A few readers wrote to me asking for further clarification on the differences between investment and operation expenditures. For example, should a one-to-one initiative be classified as an operation or investment expenditure. This short post helps answer such questions. After reading Rethink District Budgeting Part I and Part II, it is apparent that all the new “budget dance” moves start with differentiating between operation and investment expenditures. While Table 1 can be readily applied to make the distinction for most expenditures, there are cases where the distinction is not that clear cut. For certain expenditures, people may have genuine differences […]

Academic Return-on-Investment (AROI) and School Improvement

 in Application / Theory  tagged Academic Return on Investment / AROI / Investment Tracking by

Three years ago, we started working on an IES funded research project in collaboration with Dr. Fiona Hollands at Teachers College of Columbia University and Dr. Robert Shand at American University. The goal was to explore: 1) whether A-ROI metrics, developed as a compromise between rigor and practicality, can be used to improve decision-making regarding education programs, and 2) how to embed A-ROI results into district operations through a Cycle-based Budgeting model. This report shares our lessons learned from that project. https://www.jefferson.kyschools.us/sites/default/files/IES_AROI_Brief_3_Final_Dec_2021.pdf In this report, we talked about how we applied some of the lessons learned when developing a new version of our […]