Logic Modelling - Inputs
Jan 1st, 2009 by Don Ledingham
((READING%ofStudentsWithLGns + MATH%ofStudentsWithLGns)x%Tested)
—————————————————————— x 100
(TotalProgramCostPerWeightedFTEStudent / DistrictCostDifferential)
This post is one of a series linked to The Logic Model - getting a social return on investement?
The concept of inputs in education has the potential to cause two quite different reactions.
On the one hand there is the understandable demand for more inputs or investment in the system. More money, more resources, more technology, more teachers, more books, more support, more time, etc, etc. The underlying assumption being that more inputs will lead to better outcomes.
On the other hand there is a general distaste at any attempt to objectively judge the return on these inputs or investments. I can imagine the negative reaction of many teachers and parents to Florida’s Department of Education Return on Investment Index - as set out below
Return on Investment (ROI) Index |
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Florida’s educators and policymakers are frequently asked to explain how funds appropriated for education are spent and how effectively these funds have been used to generate school and student performance. Because funding for education is an investment in Florida’s future, the shareholders (Florida’s citizens) have an interest in the return provided by this investment.Evaluating schools’ educational return on investment (ROI) can help answer key questions about the direction of education in Florida, including the following:
To assist in answering these questions, the Florida Department of Education has developed the ROI website, which includes an ROI index calculation for schools. The ROI index provides an indicator of a school’s cost-effectiveness by combining two key measures of the delivery of educational programs: costs and learning gains. In very general terms, the ROI index is determined by dividing the percentage of students with learning gains by the program costs per weighted full-time equivalent student at the school. Higher learning gains result in a higher ROI index if costs are the same. Higher costs produce a lower ROI index if learning gains are the same. Schools with high learning gains and low costs will have the highest ROI indexes. Schools with low learning gains and high costs will have the lowest ROI indexes. For more information about the formula for ROI, see the ROI Technical Descriptions section of this document. |
It’s into this difficult world that I am trying to track a course where we can establish some link between investment, and social return on that investment but in a way which helps us to improve education and not just spend our time collecting data in order to justify the spend. (note that the Florida system is based upon Return on Investment - not Social Return on Investment)
It’s here that Stephen Downes’ recent comments are of real help:
I’m not suggesting that it (improvement) is difficult to define - I am suggesting that there is no single thing you can call ‘improvement’.
I’m saying you shouldn’t use a term like “improvement” - you should state specifically what it is you want to increase in schools and then as whether *that* is something I would or would not seek to see in schools.
I agree with Stephen here about improvement being something which must be attached to something which is being specifically done to lead to an outcome, e.g. the introduction of interactive whiteboards. It’s in relation to such specific projects that we should be attempting to judge the impact of such an investment, learning from that, and then building that learning into future projects.
The bottom line here is that I don’t want to go down the line of trying to measure overall school return on total investment. I already know that a small school has a much greater cost per pupil - and therefore a much lower return on investment than a large school. However, I am interested in getting teachers, school leaders, parents, education officers, civil servants, and politicians to adopt a much more rigorous view on the relationship between inputs and outcomes - in much the same way as Dragon might do when investing their own money in a venture.
