Estimating Common Core costs
Fordham Institute puts 'smart' price at $681 million
The adoption of the Common Core standards comes at tough time for districts that have cut teacher training days and textbook purchases to stave off further layoffs. But a new study for the Fordham Institute co-authored by a University of San Francisco political science professor concludes that the transition to the new standards in the next few years need not be onerous.
“The bottom line is that successful (Common Core) implementation does not have to be wildly expensive – and could also support changes that have a permanent and positive impact on the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning,” says Putting a Price on the Common Core: How Much Does Smart Implementation Cost?
“Smart” is key. The researchers, who included Patrick Murphy of USF, did a state-by-state breakdown using three scenarios for one-time costs for buying new materials, training teachers in the new standards, and implementing the new assessments. For California, the cost ranged from $380 million (the El Cheapo model the authors don’t recommend) to $1.6 billion, the Business as Usual model. The latter assumes the state would proceed with the Common Core as it has with previous state standards adoptions, with full purchases of printed textbooks for every student and 80 hours of professional development for every math and English language arts teacher.
However, the authors argue that technology and national standards create a third, “balanced option” costing $681 million. Common Core offers opportunities for California to piggyback on curriculum development and lesson planning that other states and national educator groups are doing well already. California can and should tap into those resources. The balanced or middle way assumes that teachers would receive some of their training in webinars and on their own through online lessons and the rest though the “train the trainer” method, in which one or two staff members receive intensive training and then teach others. Instead of a paperbound textbook, they could supplement materials using open source or other digital content. The assessments could be computer administered. (California is part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium of states, which is creating computer-adaptive online assessments for 2014-15.)
The estimated costs of Common Core for California and the next four largest states under three scenarios. Column 5 is the amount the states now have to spend on teacher training and textbooks. Columns 6 - 8 are the net costs, after applying Column 5 to the costs in Columns 2 - 4. Source: Putting a Price Tag on Common Core. (Click to enlarge)
How much net savings?
Those are the gross costs. However, since states are already spending money on teacher training and textbooks and materials, the study assumes that for the next few years this money would be channeled to Common Core, so the net cost of implementing the new standards would be substantially less. As the study notes, “… it’s hard to fathom why any state or district would not seek to repurpose much of its current budget for standards implementation at least relative to math and English language arts.”
The study puts California’s current annual expenditures at $533 million. Subtract that amount from each of the three options, and the net costs for California drop substantially – to $1.070 billion for business as usual and $148 million for the “balanced” approach. In theory, the cheap model would save the state $153 million from what it is paying now by going digital and cutting corners on training, but this figure is silly, for reasons I’ll get to (see chart).
The Fordham study’s net cost to California of $148 million contrasts with the estimate of the state Department of Education. The Department of Education projects the cost of converting to Common Core at between $1.36 billion and $1.56 billion, according to figures that Paul Hefner, communications director for the Department, passed on. This is very close to Fordham’s “Business as Usual” amount and approach. It assumes $500 million to $700 million for textbooks and materials, plus $871 million to train the state’s 287,000 teachers ($2,000 for each middle and high school teacher, who’d be trained in one subject for 80 hours, and $4,000 for elementary teachers, who’d be trained in math and English language arts). Proposition 98 spending next year will be around $50 billion.
There’s no way of knowing now who’s closer to being right, Fordham’s middle way or the state, because the state’s charter schools and 1,000 school districts will be fending for themselves, some making the most of collaboration and new technology, some sitting around waiting for the state to tell them what to do.
Assembly, batteries are extra
But there are additional factors to consider:
- Many districts have cut back on training and materials over the past several years, so the $535 million that the study estimates is being spent now on those items is high. The Legislature removed restrictions on materials purchases and professional development spending. A survey this year from the Legislative Analyst found that nearly 80 percent of districts had cut back on training, and more than 60 percent reported spending less on materials. That’s why it’s fatuous to say that the state could save $152 million under the cheapest option. It can’t save on what it’s not now spending.
- The study doesn’t include the cost of technology needed to administer Common Core tests and achieve savings in the implementation – a major omission. In a Fordham webinar last week, Murphy cited two reasons: States and districts are all over the map in their use of and capacity for computers and bandwidth, and states should be investing in technology for its benefits to education that go beyond Common Core adoption. (Districts are in the midst of taking a survey that will reveal how well equipped they are for administering the SMARTER Balanced assessment in 2015.)
- The Common Core cost estimates are for one-time expenses, but districts can spread them out over several years.
- California shifted some of the Common Core standards in math to lower grades and added a few standards in English language arts. The study doesn’t factor in extra assessment and training costs from California’s deviations, and the State Board and Department of Education haven’t dealt with the issue either.
One of Common Core’s sharpest critics in California, Ze’ev Wurman, believes that the Fordham study’s implementation estimates are way low. The technology costs will be substantial; the new computer-administered tests, in which teachers will grade essays and questions, will be permanently more expensive; and the teacher training needs will far exceed 80 hours, Wurman said last week during a webcast forum sponsored by Fordham. “Professional development will take hundreds of hours over many years,” he said. The needs will be in content, not pedagogy; Common Core requires teaching elements of geometry in middle schools, a more extensive knowledge of fractions, plus close reading to texts in English language arts. (He is not alone in believing that Common Core will expose weaknesses in math knowledge of many elementary teachers.)
“Eighty hours will not solve anything,” Wurman said.
In a foreword to the study, Fordham Institute President Chester “Checker” Finn and Ambler Winkler acknowledged the difficulty of implementing Common Core in a few years. “Let’s not kid ourselves. Of course it is going to be a challenge to implement the Common Core standards well. School leaders will be charged with advancing new teaching and learning paradigms, teachers with conveying more demanding material, and students with learning tougher content and skills.”
But Finn and Winkler also chided the rear-guard tactics by Common Core critics to overstate costs. “Having lost the adoption battle, Common Core opponents are now waging a budget battle, determined to paint the (Common Core standards) as a crazily costly mandate imposed upon the states. Though we loathe scare tactics, we do agree that states and districts had better go in with eyes wide open. After all, if they are to approach implementation seriously, they must have a solid estimate of its price tag.”
The report contains enough hedges across the board its not clear how believable it is.
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The “batteries are extra” are right on. Schools – knowing common core is coming anyway – aren’t buying textbooks and materials except when there is no alternative – and the idea that all schools have the infrastructure without substantial additional investment to use digital content is sadly wrong.
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It would be interesting to hear from individual districts. I know a couple of superintendents who are remaining in a holding pattern because they suspect that CA will fail to fund essential components (like technology). With looming cuts should the tax measures fail, it’s going to be all about triage locally, with no bandwidth to jump on the latest bandwagon [pitiful puns intended].
In my kids’ school district the capacity for the online requirements is non-existent and there are no plans (nor funds) for the equipment or broadband access. Perusing the budgets for the next three years (based on failed tax initiatives) there are no line items for the common core textbooks nor increased PD.
Looks like a lot of top-down mandates with a heavy sprinkle of magical thinking fairy dust.
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John Political Science Professors and now doing cost estimates for implementation of Common Core? WOW what”s next ? John
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John: Patrick Murphy was one of three authors of the report. I linked to his home page and a bio that shows his extensive knowledge of and research in education.
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Paying a “balanced” $681 million for CCS instead of the state’s estimated $1.36- $1.56 billion is hardly a savings, unless you’re one of those people who buys the new Slice ‘n Dice because “You can’t afford not to.” CA can afford to pass on the standards, as it has an excellent set of its own, as confirmed by Fordham and a more candid Chester Finn of not too long ago. As for Finn’s contention that we’ve lost the adoption battle, that is not true in CA. Where are the signed contracts? If they exist, let’s see them, along with their provisions.
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In our school, we have no air conditioning, and we don’t even have enough electrical capacity to add any more computers. The entire electrical will need to be redone to put in even a modest lab of 5 computers per classroom, say. The cost of the machines themselves – which is all I think most people think about – pales by comparison.
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el- that’s pathetic. Forget about Common Core assessments— you and your students are being denied opportunities available to other students where those investments have been made. If upgrades must be made for a 1x/year assessment (or if Smarter Balanced is to be believed, 1x/year summative and 3x/year interim) and you get your electricity and computer needs upgraded, that’s 175 days of the year you can expand other opportunities for your students. Williams settlement did not cover all the inequalities that still exist between schools and districts. Lack of access to technology- for teachers, for students- does not have to be addressed uniformly, it’s not a one-size-fits-all, but nothing vs 1-1 iPads in a classroom is a large discrepancy.
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Money does matter but when it comes for education everyone forget about it…..
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The situation described by el is all too common for schools across California, let alone the nation. There has to be a rethinking of Common Core within the boundaries of economic constraints. I am far from happy with Common Core, and consider that many of the changes that would benefit students are not a part of the final product. I am no fan of technology for technology’s sake, and knowing the limited computer experience of so many children, I just can’t fathom how accurate any testing will be.
It would be great if Ze’ev Wurman’s concerns could be considered more fully, because I think he is accurate.
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“Train the Teacher” models of professional development are in my experience a great way to save money only if you don’t really mind that the training will go further than the fully-trained teachers. What generally happens is that a couple of teachers are fully-trained, then expected to somehow entice their colleagues to attend after-school, unpaid professional development sessions. No release time is given to see trained colleagues in practice; the trained teachers receive no support or assistance in developing useful, targeted training sessions. When the implementation then fails, though, blame falls directly on the teachers.
I have to concur that the authors seem unaware of the technology constraints in California schools. I have two computers – an eighteen-year old iMac and a five-year old PC donated to my classroom. When both of these computers are on and in use, no other electronic device can be on because the electric system will blow. Similarly, despite over twenty days with no heat this winter, space heaters cannot be used because they also blow out the outlets. Neither the technology or the infrastructure can support the suggestions of this roll-out plan.
I propose that California use its purchasing power – and government as needed – to drive down textbook prices. Every year, I receive three or four workbooks per student that cost at least forty dollars apiece. The Common Core standards will require entirely new curricula sets in each classroom, and every one will cost thousands of dollars. I have a hard time believing that the profit margins to publishers are reasonable.
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Especially when you consider the digital divide, the ONLY place some some students are going to get any computer skills is if they can use them at school. I’m not an advocate for technology for the sake of technology, but the fact that computers can be used for mindless activities is not a reason to keep typing skills, etc. from today’s students. Many schools are already using computer adaptive assessments, and they don’t require any special knowledge on students’ parts. And don’t we want these kids “college and career ready?” GRE, GMAT, etc. already computer adaptive tests.
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Does anyone know how many computers per ‘x’ students will be required for the testing process?
Too many numbers are floating around right now and I prefer defined parameters. Kind of like my household budget – I need hard numbers with a clear goal.
Because of the computer testing topic, I closely watched my 10 year old, who is fairly computer literate, struggle on a typing assignment tonight. I worry that the technology interface will override the cognition a child would usually bring to the testing process. As someone who had never taken a multiple choice test until I moved here and had to take the GRE, I can attest to what the unfamiliarity of a testing process has upon performance.
Anyway, not to worry, with all the looming cuts we’ll be back to using slates before long!
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At last, a useful report outlining some of the details regarding the transition to online assessments:
“The consortia will support a paper version of the test for three years after the deadline [2014-15] and they also envision a 12-week assessment window giving schools flexibility in the use of limited computer resources.
[snip] An administrator of an elementary school, for instance, would evaluate its computer inventory and decide that the entire 5th grade can take the test online. But for the 4th grade, only the math portion could be done on the computers while the rest of the school would be using the paper version.”
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There is still a lot that makes no sense. A 12 week window is the difference between completing a curriculum and not completing more than 70%. Once the transition is made to a paperless testing process does this mean a school with limited computers (say 20 ancient devices for a school of 437) will start testing when the first students are 70% through the curriculum? Bearing in mind that many of our schools are looking to fare extremely poorly on the newly released weighted funding proposals, the report lacks a real life ‘factor’ in the details. I’d like to know if other schools are looking at similar difficulties in the long term.
12 weeks is the difference between February and May. That’s a long time in the life of an elementary age student.
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Seems to me it would be hard to argue that results from a computer-aided exam would be directly comparable to a paper exam. The specs say that the questions will be more open-ended, like asking kids to draw the graph. To grade similar questions on paper would require hand grading.
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I very much agree with E Rat’s observation about “train the trainer” model. It is no different from expecting that a student can become an effective teacher of, say, algebra simply by attending an algebra class and passing a test. (Oh, wait … isn’t this what group learning and peer tutoring already is?) Couple it with the time limitation for “free” after-hours PD and the expectation that one can reduce costs this way is naive, to put it politely. Add to this the significant need to change the content of teacher training (think of teaching real chunks of geometry in the middle school) and even one-time 80 hours PD is seriously underestimating the costs. This is like our High Speed Rail — $35 billion when offered to the voters, jumping to $98 billion after the voter already bought into it, and dropping to “only” $678 billion when it turns out that the public may have not bought in yet. A classic “bait and switch.”
As to technology, I don’t believe that 12 weeks is reasonable testing window. Perhaps country-wide, perhaps even not that. For a given school if it goes beyond a week or two, test security will become a huge deal. Paper & pencil test may make some sense as long as we don’t use computer-adaptive testing (CAT). But since we have recently switched from PARCC to SBAC, we have committed to CAT testing. So no paper&pencil alternative for us.
In my calculations of technology cost I tend to use a rather simple model. It does not cover everything, but I think it gives one a good sense of the real costs. And one should assume computers dedicated ONLY to assessment. Both the need of additional through-the-year formative assessments, and the fear of broken or outdated/incompatible equipment harming school testing results, clearly point to schools NOT using the assessment computers for routine daily use.
– inexpensive $500 cost for HW & SW, amortized over 5 years
– 20% annual maintenance, SW support, and insurance.
This comes to $200/year cost of a computer. One needs one such machine for each 4-5 tested students, resulting in additional $40-$50 per year per tested student. This on top of the test cost itself, which will come to at least $50-$60/student (SBAC, as a part of its “bait and switch” approach, assumes that teachers will score the performance items for free.) Compare that with the total cost of testing today at less than $20 per tested student.
One time costs for technology come to about $100/computer in additional electrical and HVAC installation. Added maintenance costs for the electrical & HVAC, as well as added costs for electricity and network bandwidth are not counted.
Finally, one should note that if one believes in electronic textbooks and their supposed “cost reduction,” one needs to budget for one such computer PER STUDENTS, on top of the testing computers. This comes to ongoing $200 per student per year on top of the publisher licensing fees and additional SW costs. Plus the one time costs of installing massive number of electrical outlets in each classroom and the added bandwidth and electricity. Whatever else, cheap it ain’t.
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@Ze’ev, I think your one time infrastructure costs of $100 per computer are low for many schools. That’s only about $3000 per 30 person classroom which is probably enough for the furniture and the raw outlets, but not the wiring to get to them (which will have to involve retrofitting drops or some sort of floor installed system) or the overall upgrade to get more amps into each classroom, plus adding HVAC equipment.
You could avoid some of that by using a system of laptops, but you’d then be replacing the expense of outlets with the $100 per year expense of new laptop batteries, and you’d still need the amps to charge them and you’d be limited in the number of hours of use per day.
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The $100/outlet is a ballpark estimate that should include installation, changes to the power distribution in the building, and possibly even adding HVAC capacity, etc. Not every outlet needs dedicated wires brought to it, or a dedicated fuse.circuit. Many of these are shared across the classroom. Still, it adds up. Laptops and iPads do not solve the problem as kids don’t always recharge their machines at night, batteries degrade over time and even without degradation don’t always last through the 6-8 hours day. And portable electronic initial cost and maintenance cost is higher. Particularly insurance in K-12 environment (smile).
The ongoing maintenance costs can also be quite serious. There is a big difference between maintaining 2-4 outlets per classroom that are mostly statically used by the teacher, and maintaining 30 of them where they are constantly used by students to plug and unplug their machines. I suspect that additional full-time maintenance electrician will be needed for every 200-300 students and additional full-time computer/networking tech maint guy. These can go beyond the 20% for equipment maint & insurance that is the typical industry cost. Please remember that inoperative computers or broken outlets — even for a relatively short time — in a computer-based textbook environment can (and should!) cause lawsuits similar to those dealing with absence of textbooks today.
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I personally look forward to “snow days” announcements on the radio being joined by “sorry kids no internet days”, where they can’t have school because the ‘net is down.
Most citizens are unaware of all the magic gnomes (and their paychecks) needed to keep it all running…
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More seriously, it’s pretty common in an office to have internet outages of 5-15 minutes. During a whole office day, this is a minor annoyance. In the middle of a 45 minute class period, it would be deadly. I wonder if anyone has considered that it could happen in the middle of an exam.
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Thanks for putting numbers to students Ze’ev. Having calculated your estimates based upon the number of students in our K-8 (where we don’t have a dedicated classroom for computers but use the stage in the library …) I can report that the cash deficit projected in our latest three year revise won’t be reduced by adding the testing costs! I agree with costs of on-line books, etc., and knowing the problems already in older schools, the electrical issues are significant. Kind of ironic that we were supposed to going more green, and now will be adding circuits, and who knows what else.
I wonder if CDE actuaries have actually calculated the “start up” costs for the new testing regime. So many of us have computers that are too outdated to support the new demands. But … why do kids need science materials, math manipulatives, art supplies, musical instruments, and even books when we can pay for computers dedicated to annual testing! Maybe I’ll home school again!
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Just another ploy to rape and rip property tax owners, devised by intellectuals or unions with no souls. I was taught by nuns with simple methods, memorization, repeat, repeat, repeat, practice, practice, practice. I am in the top 1% of wage earners, active in my community, and know the rule “i before e except after c.” I can diagram a sentence, write a letter to the editor, spell, and even create multi-million dollar budgets when I have to. I dont’ have a college degree — all that learning on high school alone. What a concept
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Who is your provider, el, or do you work for the government. If you have these types of outages, some thing is wrong with your IT folks.
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By the way, I taught myself to set up and operate a computer 20 years to run a business. I guarantee that with the government and unions involved the technological age will cost us 100 times more than it should. I live in an area where we are the 5th highest per pupil spenders in the nation // with test scores I won’t even discuss. This will just give politicians another chance to raise every tax in the world while screaming, “It’s for the children, It’s for the children.” This is the perpetual cry // whether for books or technology, it’s all about money!!! Better teach your own children if you want them to read.
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@AnneR, I’ve never been in any location that doesn’t have occasional 5-10 minute hiccups in service, say once a month. The nice folk at Comcast, AT&T and the like aren’t quite up to Plain Old Telephone Service reliability. Wireless routers flake out and need restarting. Perhaps government offices do better; I wouldn’t know.
For workers, it’s a bit of a nuisance, perhaps time to get up and stretch and get coffee. For students in the middle of a 45 minute period, it would be deadly.
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