Sneak Peek from Accents Online May 26, 2016
There’s no doubt that personalized learning—with its highly differentiated academic and social learning experiences—garners higher levels of academic achievement, but implementing personalized learning across an entire school is an enormous task—and could be a pricey one, too.
A recent publication from the Center on Reinventing Public Education reports on a study of the costs associated with implementing a broad range of personalized learning models in 16 American charter elementary and secondary schools, details how school leaders allocate funds, and suggests what may be needed to make personalized learning sustainable on public dollars.
The authors offer several key findings, including:
1. The majority of the funds spent on personalized learning schools went toward salaries, facilities, and operations (similar to traditional schools).
2. The one-time start-up costs of launching personalized learning schools aren’t always substantial—some schools spent as little as $7,400 per student at start up. Schools routinely underestimated costs in their start-up planning in two areas, however: consulting fees for teacher training and facility remodeling and purchasing.
3. Estimating start-up costs, revenue, and enrollment isn’t an exact science. Almost every school underestimated start-up expenses and most overestimated revenues—particularly revenue driven by total enrollment.
4. Personalized learning schools tend to favor human factors. Faced with budget trade-offs, schools choose to forego technology rather than cut back on funding for staff positions and maintain small class sizes.
Although the trend seems to lean toward reducing dependence on private sources, the long-term financial stability of personalized learning schools is uncertain.
Access the full report here.