District Case Study: Comparing ROI and R3-Informed Strategic Funding and Finance  

In the first blog in this series, I explored why traditional return on investment (ROI) often falls short as a tool for evaluating investments in public education. In the second, I introduced Relevant Return on Resources (R³) as a more complete accountability framework and described how Strategic Funding and Finance provides the budgeting and decision-making practices needed to put that framework into action.

But frameworks matter only if they lead to better decisions.

So, what happens when district leaders face a real budgeting challenge? How might the decision-making process differ if leaders approach it through a traditional ROI lens rather than an R³ and Strategic Funding and Finance lens?

To answer those questions, consider the following district scenario. The district, the challenge, and the available data remain the same. What changes is the question leaders ask—and, ultimately, the conclusions they reach.  

Different questions reveal different information. And different information can lead to very different decisions.

Scenario: A Mid-Size District Facing Budget Pressure

A mid-size school district is entering its budget cycle facing declining enrollment, the end of federal relief funds, and uneven student outcomes across schools. District leaders are under pressure to demonstrate fiscal responsibility while continuing to improve student outcomes.  

At the same time, the district has invested heavily in a literacy intervention serving several elementary schools. The program is relatively expensive, and early results appear mixed.

District leaders must decide whether to continue investing in the initiative, modify it, or redirect resources elsewhere.

What a Traditional ROI Lens Might Say

Using a traditional ROI approach, leaders begin by examining the literacy intervention itself.

The questions are straightforward:

• Did student achievement increase enough to justify the cost?
• Are results strong enough to demonstrate an acceptable return?
• Does this investment outperform alternative approaches? 

In this analysis, the literacy intervention is treated largely as a single input expected to produce a measurable outcome. Leaders focus on short-term performance indicators and compare those results against the program's cost.

The findings are not especially encouraging. Gains are modest. Results vary across schools. Some schools show improvement, while others show little change.

Because the return appears uneven, district leaders may conclude that the program should be reduced or eliminated. On the surface, that conclusion appears reasonable. But it may also be incomplete.

The Limitation of the ROI Lens

The problem is not that district leaders lack data.The problem is that the ROI lens focuses attention on only a small portion of the information needed to make a sound decision. The analysis identifies that results vary. It does not explain why. 

It does not examine whether resources were distributed according to student need. It does not consider whether the schools implementing the initiative had sufficient staffing, coaching, time, or professional learning. And it does not account for how the literacy intervention interacts with other supports already operating within the district.

As a result, leaders risk making decisions based on outcomes alone without understanding the conditions that produced those outcomes. 

What an R3 and Strategic Funding and Finance Lens Reveals 

Using an R³ lens, district leaders begin with a different question:

Are our literacy resources producing the results we intend, for the students we intend, under real implementation conditions?

That broader question leads leaders to look beyond the program itself and examine the larger system of resources supporting literacy improvement.

Rather than focusing exclusively on test-score changes, leaders investigate several additional factors:

• How literacy resources are distributed across schools and student populations
• Whether schools have the staffing, coaching, professional learning, and scheduling supports needed for successful implementation
• How the intervention fits within the district's broader literacy strategy
• Whether resources are reaching the students they were intended to serve

Strategic Funding and Finance provides the practical tools and decision-making processes needed to answer those questions. Leaders conduct a resource allocation review, examine staffing patterns, analyze implementation conditions, and review evidence from multiple sources. The resulting picture looks very different.

What Leaders Learn

The analysis reveals several important findings.

First, schools serving the highest concentrations of struggling readers actually receive less instructional support than some lower-need schools when staffing patterns are considered.

Second, the literacy intervention was added to existing school responsibilities without sufficient time for teacher collaboration, coaching, or implementation support.

Third, schools demonstrating stronger outcomes were not necessarily using a different program. Instead, they paired the intervention with stronger implementation supports, including coaching, schedule adjustments, and dedicated instructional planning time.

In other words, the issue was not simply whether the literacy intervention worked. The issue was whether the district had created the conditions necessary for the investment to succeed. The contrast becomes clearer when both approaches are applied to the same district scenario.

Exhibit 2. What Each Approach Reveals in the District Scenario 

Neither approach ignores results. The difference is that R³ and Strategic Funding and Finance seek to understand why results are occurring before major decisions are made. 
 

The Decision Changes

Because leaders now have a more complete understanding of the situation, their response changes.

Rather than eliminating the literacy intervention, they choose to:

• Reallocate resources toward schools with the greatest literacy needs
• Strengthen implementation supports through coaching and professional learning
• Better align staffing, instructional time, and literacy resources
• Establish shared indicators to monitor progress over time

The key insight is that district leaders did not discover whether the program was inherently successful or unsuccessful. Instead, they learned that outcomes were shaped by how resources interacted across the system. That understanding led to a different decision. 

Better Questions Lead to Better Decisions

The distinction between traditional ROI and Relevant Return on Resources is not a rejection of accountability. It is an effort to strengthen accountability by grounding resource decisions in a more accurate understanding of how educational improvement occurs.

Traditional ROI asks whether a specific investment produced a measurable return.

R³ asks whether the full set of resources available to a district is producing the outcomes students need, for the students those resources are intended to serve, under the conditions that actually exist.

Strategic Funding and Finance turns that question into action by helping leaders align resources, examine evidence, and make informed tradeoffs over time.

In complex learning systems, the goal is not simply to calculate value. It is to make better decisions on behalf of students. And better decisions begin with better questions.

Keep reading...

Using the Right Tools to Evaluate School Investments- Part 1

Using the Right Tools to Evaluate School Investments- Part 2