State minimum academic performance standards provide a useful step toward monetizing learning. Teachers have opposed these two indices of public school learning. I have opposed them also, partly because they limit convenient instructional work-arounds. Yet, we all know that we infer an undescribed monetized learning index whenever we request resources for programs and projects.
Describing NESI (New Era School Initiative) and Rationed Learning as well as developing aLEAP (a Learning Efficiency Analysis Paradigm/Plan/Program) have helped to clarify ways to use monetized learning to student benefit.
An informal analysis of teacher arguments for more state funding leads to this hypothesis. I hope someone tests it formally: Teachers implicitly use at least one of the following formuli to argue for increased funding to match monetized learning costs of their students.
Formula 1. Total state reimbursement to district per teacher / (Total number of minutes of scheduled classroom instruction per teacher for the Academic Year / Total number state standards for students of a teacher to meet {= Average number of minutes per minimum academic standard}) = Average cost per minimum academic standard.
Formula 2. Average cost per minimum academic standard / Average number of learning objectives per standard = Average cost of learning objectives to meet each state minimum academic performance standard.
For development of aLEAP, I assume that student learning with Tablet and other mobile PCs transforms teacher guesses about instructional tactics into databased calculations of the probability of a lesson yielding learning criterion by each student, and thereby costs per trials and errors.
This frame makes it easier to match learning costs with efficient instruction in order to increase student learning and other benefits, including reducing instructionally induced rationed learning.
aLEAP (a Learning Efficiency Analysis Paradigm)
Calculating Learning Efficiency: NESI Conversation 3
Teachers’ Conflicts of Interest Ration Learning: NESI Conversation 11