Several years ago, during the beginning of the “fiscal cliff,” forward-thinking districts and vendors began taking a more strategic approach to instructional purchasing. They sought to understand, articulate, and quantify the value of the products and programs they were implementing. This work gave rise to terms such as Return on Instruction, Return on Achievement, Return on Learning, and simply Return on Investment (ROI).
Those organizations that were trying to understand the value of what they were using (or not using) generally adopted a retrospective approach rooted in historical psychometrics and efficacy studies—looking primarily at correlations and impacts on test scores. While this work remains extremely important for program and process improvement, enhanced reporting, and promoting equitable outcomes, it is not a forward-looking indicator of what works, nor does it provide a business foundation for what is sustainable and scalable across educational environments.
Fast forward a few years, and many districts are under increasing financial pressure. Conversations have shifted from strategic investment to budget amendments and transfers—essentially cuts and reallocations. Yet we view these decisions through a broader lens: delivering equitable learning outcomes while building a future-ready workforce. While financial sustainability will continue to be a major focus for districts and vendors alike (more on that in previous articles), let’s first discuss Learning ROI.
When we work with districts and vendors to quantify the impact of programs and learning, we take a simple approach:
Understand Costs. Quantify ROI. Develop a Continuous Model.
There are, of course, many prerequisites that must happen first—data wrangling, cleaning, inventorying, strategic goal alignment, and more. We won’texplore those topics today. We also consider other important factors such as privacy, security, and user feedback when determining ROI.
Understanding and Analyzing Costs
Objective:
Determine the cost of each educational program and the cost per student.
Activities:
- Develop a classification taxonomy and categorize costs appropriately.
- Inventory program expenditures and allocate costs consistently.
Deliverables:
- Cost analysis reports.
- Cost-per-student reports.
Quantifying ROI
Objective:
Evaluate program impact on student outcomes.
Activities:
- Define key strategic inputs and desired outcomes.
- Determine and weight ROI factors (e.g., usage, growth, benchmark performance, assessments, sentiment, etc.).
- Link funding strategies to academic performance metrics such as usage, test scores, graduation rates, and stakeholder feedback.
- Analyze outcomes across student demographics to ensure equity.
Deliverables:
- ROI analysis report and insights presentation.
- ROI and cost prediction updates and an ongoing monitoring plan.
Developing a Continuous ROI Model
Objective:
Maintain overall program and financial health.
Activities:
- Establish benchmarks to measure ROI going forward.
- Create feedback loops for continuous improvement.
- Build user-friendly tools to capture essential information such as program descriptions, goals, and cost breakdowns.
Deliverables:
Actionable program, ROI, and cost insights.
While the framework above may seem straightforward, we do not see many districts, institutions, or vendors actively working to improve their understanding of total costs or developing ROI models tailored to the new realities of education. The resulting lack of visibility negatively impacts financial health, and we are beginning to see the snowball effects. Financial sustainability ultimately affects educational sustainability.
From Program ROI to Longitudinal Learning ROI
The framework above is only one input into running a sustainable educational organization. Just one.
Increasingly, learning and development organizations are being asked not only to justify the return on incremental programs but also to demonstrate how learning translates into workforce outcomes. This is not simply about showing that Career and Technical Education programs prepare students for jobs or that earning a “3” on an AP exam signals college readiness. Recent research suggests there remains a disconnect between what students learn and what they need to thrive in the workforce.
This is one of the challenges we are increasingly exploring and incorporating into our work.
One might ask:
- How does the work I do as a fourth-grade teacher positively impact STEM workforce readiness?
- How does foundational skill development translate into building a competent workforce?
- What are the skills of tomorrow, and how do I teach them if they aren’t yet defined like today’s standards?
These are difficult questions.
It is the intersection between foundational skill development and the cultivation of emerging competencies that will define the next level of ROI. In many ways, this represents a continuation rather than a departure from what educators have always done—building strong foundations while preparing students for an uncertain future.
We recently explored this challenge with a vendor partner and found that the conversation naturally shifted beyond measuring today’s outcomes toward understanding how learning experiences create the conditions for tomorrow’s capabilities.
Longitudinal Return on Learning
Longitudinal Return on Learning is emerging as a framework for understanding how K–12 and higher education experiences translate into workforce drivers over time. The next evolution of ROI will not simply measure what students learned; it will seek to understand how learning compounds into adaptability, competence, and readiness for an increasingly uncertain future.
For educational organizations and their vendors, the question is shifting from:
“Did this program work?” to “How does learning today create value tomorrow?”
The progression is becoming increasingly clear:
- Efficacy: Did the program improve outcomes?
- Program ROI: Was the investment worthwhile?
- Continuous ROI: How do we sustain and improve value over time?
- Longitudinal Learning ROI: How does learning today contribute to workforce readiness tomorrow?
One implication of Longitudinal Learning ROI is that the classroom itself becomes an early signal detection environment. Rather than measuring only outcomes after the fact, educators can begin to understand how foundational learning experiences contribute to the development of emerging competencies over time.
As education increasingly intersects with economic mobility and workforce development, the ability to continuously connect learning experiences with emerging competencies and long-term outcomes will become one of the defining challenges—and opportunities—of the next decade.
Revisiting Learning ROI (V1)
Several years ago at the start of the “fiscal cliff”, the insightful districts and vendors were starting to get ahead on their instructional purchases seeking to understand, articulate, and quantify the value of the products and programs they were implementing. This would manifest itself into terms like “Return on Instruction”, “Return on Achievement”, “Return on Learning” or simply “Return on Investment (ROI)”.
Those entities that were working towards understanding the value of what they were using (or not using) generally used a “look back” approach is this rootedin historical psychometrics and “efficacy” – correlation and impact on test scores. While we believe that this work is extremely important to help provide insight into program / process improvement, improved data reporting, and enhancing the equity of programs and policies, it’s not a forward-looking indicator of what works, and lacks a business foundation for what is sustainable and scalable across education environments.
Fast forward a couple years, more and more districts are under financial stress where the exercise has become more of budget amendments and transvers (i.e, cuts and moving of budget line items), but we see these as more of a holistic model of providing equiable learning outcomes and driving a future-ready workforce. While financial health sustainability will be a focus of both districts and vendors in the future (more on that here), let’s first discuss the Learning ROI.
When we work with districts (and vendors) to help with the quantification of programs and learning, we take a simple approach: Understand Cost, Quantify ROI, Develop a Continuous Model. Given there are a lot of other prerequests that need to happen such as data wraingling, cleaning, inventorying, strategic goal alignment, etc. Without loss of generality (WLOG), we won’t explore those today, and we also like to take other factors into consideration such as privacy, security, user reviews, etc. When determining ROI.
Understanding and Analyzing Costs
- Objective: Analyze collected data to determine the cost of each educational program and the cost per student
- Activities: Develop classification taxonomy and categorize costs appropriately.
- Deliverables: Cost Analysis / Cost per Student Reports
Quantifying ROI
Objective:
Evaluate program impact on student outcomes.
Activities:
- Define key strategic inputs and desired outcomes.
- Determine and weight ROI factors (e.g., usage, growth, benchmark performance, assessments, sentiment, etc.).
- Link funding strategies to academic performance metrics such as usage, test scores, graduation rates, and stakeholder feedback.
- Analyze outcomes across student demographics to ensure equity.
Deliverables:
- ROI analysis report and insights presentation.
- ROI and cost prediction updates and an ongoing monitoring plan.
Develop Continuous ROI Model
Objective:
Maintain overall program and financial health.
Activities:
- Establish benchmarks to measure ROI going forward.
- Create feedback loops for continuous improvement.
- Build user-friendly tools to capture essential information such as program descriptions, goals, and cost breakdowns.
Deliverables:
Actionable program, ROI, and cost insights.
While the above may seem simplified, we don’t see a lot of districts, institutions (or vendors) working to enhance their understanding of overall costs or creating and maintaining ROI models that fit their needs in the new normal of education. The net results negatively impact their financial health and now we are starting to see a snowball effect. [See this article for more information.]
Return on Learning now includes Proving Teaching and Learning has a Direct impact on Workforce Readiness
The above is just one small input to running a sustainable business or program. Just one. We are now seeing that learning and development organizations not only justify the return on learning for incremental programs, but there is pressure now to show program impact on the work force. This is not about showing CTE classes in high school are the ones that are appliable to the workforce or a “3” on an AP class is signaling college readiness. As the most recent research has shown there “a disconnect between what students learn and what they need to learn to thrive in the workforce.” This is now one of the problems we are looking into and starting to incorporate as part of our daily work.
One might ask:
- “How does the work I do as a 4th grade teacher positively impact the STEM workforce readiness?”.
- How does foundational skill development transfer to building a competent workforce?
- What are the skills of tomorrow and how do I teach them if they aren’t defined like current standards?
It’s this intersection and continuation of foundational skill building and preparing students for emerging competencies of tomorrow that will determine this next level of ROI. Here’s a brief example as we were working through this with a vendor on just this.
Longitudinal Return on Learning
Longitudinal Return on Learning is emerging as a framework for understanding how K–12 and higher education experiences translate into workforce drivers over time. The next evolution of ROI will not simply measure what students learned; it will seek to understand how learning compounds into adaptability, competence, and readiness for an increasingly uncertain future.
For educational organizations and their vendors, the question is shifting from:
“Did this program work?” to “How does learning today create value tomorrow?”
The progression is becoming increasingly clear:
- Efficacy: Did the program improve outcomes?
- Program ROI: Was the investment worthwhile?
- Continuous ROI: How do we sustain and improve value over time?
- Longitudinal Learning ROI: How does learning today contribute to workforce readiness tomorrow?
One implication of Longitudinal Learning ROI is that the classroom itself becomes an early signal detection environment. Rather than measuring only outcomes after the fact, educators can begin to understand how foundational learning experiences contribute to the development of emerging competencies over time.
As education increasingly intersects with economic mobility and workforce development, the ability to continuously connect learning experiences with emerging competencies and long-term outcomes will become one of the defining challenges—and opportunities—of the next decade.