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The future of today’s students depends on the decisions made in every classroom, school office, and district building. As budgets tighten amidst concerns with national trends in academic outcomes, district and school administrators need the right tools and data to help them choose and use their resources more effectively. This article unpacks why data-driven decision-making tools are more important than ever for school administrators and district leaders. We then explore key features to look for in the most efficacious decision-making platforms and challenges to manage when selecting and implementing such tools.

Today’s K–12 staffing environment remains uncertain to say the least, and this instability comes with real consequences. Not only does a staff departure at any level impact student learning, but it also strains a district’s budget and the staff who stay behind. Understanding the academic return on investments in staff, like teacher recruitment and retention, helps district leaders more effectively utilize their resources to weather the storm.  In this article, you will learn the meaning of ROI in education and how it supports districts with strategic staffing investments. You will also discover three strategies for allocating district funding, time, and effort to keep student learning going, even amidst staffing uncertainty. Let’s dive in. The impact of educational ROI on staff retention and efficacy Unlike the business world, a district’s “return on investments” isn’t just a ratio of profits to costs. Student learning outcomes weigh heavily in the equation, which makes “educational ROI” a unique yet critical data point for strategic district planning and decision making. And K–12 leaders need this insight now more than ever as they face budget uncertainty, especially around teacher training and retention funding.  The results of a recent EdWeek Research Center and Gates Foundation survey with district and school administrators underscore this urgency. In their responses, over 30% of participants pointed to staffing turnover at all levels of their organization as a major obstacle to aligning their financial and instructional priorities:  EPE report: “Survey respondents most commonly pointed to… an inability to sustain [instructional and fiscal] alignment over time due to leadership or staffing changes (35%) [and] inconsistent instructional goals stemming from staffing turnover (33%).” Mismatches between strategic instructional goals and budget decisions can spell disaster. Districts may waste limited dollars on ineffective learning programs or miss opportunities to deepen investments in initiatives that positively impact student learning. In more extreme cases, districts often make financial decisions to save money quickly, but end up with negative student learning and staffing consequences.  eROI is the key to aligning funding, instructional priorities, and educational investments, including those made in hiring, recruiting, training, and retaining teachers and other staff.  Let’s explore three strategies for leveraging eROI analyses to manage, mitigate, and even prevent challenging staffing turbulence.  1. A cross-functional team analyzing eROI together District decisions can be made in silos, with individual departments spending their budgets on programs or people based on metrics they identified independently (more on this in a moment). Cross-functional decisions about funding and program impact not only help stretch a more limited department budget but also empower district administrators to make more effective investments.  Leta Dietz Smith, a Title I and ESSER Grant Manager at Lee County School District, regularly uses eROI analyses to maximize her district’s funding against key instructional priorities. As she shared in a recent webinar, no analysis could happen without first bringing together the right people with the right expertise: “We have to empower our finance people to start making decisions that impact education, and we also need to empower our educators to make effective decisions that financially impact the district.” From a staffing perspective, a blend of institutional knowledge pays off. Human resources offers expertise about salary schedules, employee training, recruiting, and more. The business office holds the keys to funding sources and their rules, including for dollars that fund unique roles or extra duties, like teacher-leaders. The curriculum and instruction department can contextualize the student learning goals behind investments made in teachers, like coaching for new or early-career teachers  With all these experts in one room, district teams can begin triangulating valuable insights to build a more cohesive picture of staffing investments, their value, and, as a result, their importance for budgeting. 2. The right success metrics for the right priorities A representative team alone does not unlock the value of eROI. Administrators must also share a common language and understanding of three key factors related to every educational investment:  Available funding and funding sources Relevant student participation, usage, and academic data The district’s strategic instructional priorities Let’s continue with instructional coaching as our example to demonstrate why this alignment is so crucial. Most districts spend time, money, and effort on coaching with the aim that, by improving a teacher’s instructional practices, they in turn improve a student’s learning outcomes.  Naturally, district leadership wants to see tangible results given the costs of these programs, but which results matter most will differ based on who you ask. The business officer values budget fidelity, whereas the curriculum and instruction officer wants to see student test scores rise. In truth, these and other “success” metrics are useful, but they become more meaningful when prioritized and contextualized against one another.  For instance, a district in a financial pinch might consider downsizing its coaching team or cutting stipends for teacher-leaders for immediate relief. But this benefit may incur other academic and even staffing costs, like a smaller internal pipeline for future leadership roles or a more stretched (but less effective) coaching team.  This district will want its business officer and its curriculum and instruction officer speaking the same language and referencing the same shared set of priority metrics (that they both understand well) before recommending this or any course of action.

Today’s K–12 education funding landscape requires that district leaders make more strategic decisions about their resources than ever before. But challenges like staff turnover, renewed uncertainty about future federal funding, and even leaders’ perceptions of their own financial management skills can get in the way of smart fiscal choices.  During such turbulence, district leaders need to work closely and effectively with school principals, teachers, board members, parents, and the local community. Assessing your educational return on district investments (or eROI) can help you build stronger cohesion across this diverse group.  This article explores the value that eROI adds to these relationships. We will also share concrete ways to use this metric with key stakeholders that make you a more effective leader and move your organization toward its top priority: improving student learning.  1. eROI connects the dots across learning outcomes, usage, and spending So many administrators build budgets, allocate resources, purchase programs, and more with incomplete information, and for a good reason. It’s hard to wrangle data measuring a program’s impact on learning, its usage, and its costs. But that precise intersection reveals when, where, and how student learning happens in the context of an educational investment. Think about your district’s academic services designed to help struggling students, such as Tier II and Tier III interventions in an MTSS model. How do you know that you are getting the biggest academic “bang” for your “bucks” invested? Student participation or usage data tells you if and where classrooms actually use a district-purchased resource, but usage alone isn’t a measure of learning. Academic outcomes like report card grades or progress monitoring scores show how students are growing, though not necessarily how a specific resource contributes to that growth. That resource’s cost reveals its impact on a district’s bottom line, but not on advancing its strategic priorities.  eROI approaches this data holistically, requiring administrators to ask deeper questions such as: Do we have redundancies among our Tier II programs? Are there programs we no longer need? Do teachers not know about certain district-purchased programs? Are teachers following vendor or district-provided guidance for a program with fidelity? If not, why? Do some non-district purchased programs have high utilization? If so, why?  What academic impact does a higher dosage or frequency of usage of these Tier II resources yield? For which students, classrooms, and/or grade levels? Instead of relying on piecemeal data or guesswork, you detangle patterns of each resource’s usage and cost against the relevant academic outcomes. And this line of investigation allows you to make more nimble decisions in context. That is the power of eROI.