Guest post by Dr. Harry Bloom (hbloom1@yu.edu)
Few topics have engaged the Jewish media and Shabbos table
more intensely than the day school “tuition crisis” which is jeopardizing the
sustainability of our day schools by placing tremendous stress on family
budgets on the one hand and on schools’ abilities to fund first rate programs
on the other hand.
The pressure to reduce expenses and tuition levels is
intense. Based on benchmarking analysis conducted by the YU School Partnership
(YUSP) in approximately forty schools in five East Coast and Midwestern
communities*, a prime source of potential efficiencies lies in making more
productive use of faculty resources in our schools. After all, faculty members
are the most valuable, highest cost element within our schools. A key challenge to productivity is thinly
populated class sections. By “section” we meet a course offering such as 9th
grade honors Talmud or Advanced Hebrew language.
An examination of course offering and enrollment patterns at
five high schools drawn from our benchmarking school sample illustrates the
point. All of the schools are college preparatory in nature, all are co-ed.
Enrollment ranges from about 100 to 300.
When the schools’ sections are arrayed from high to low in
terms of enrollment, we see the following pattern.
Section
Enrollment
|
School
A
|
B
|
C
|
D
|
E
|
School
Avg
|
Lower
1/3
|
6.5
|
7.2
|
4.1
|
7.0
|
6.5
|
6.2
|
Mid
1/3
|
13.1
|
10.8
|
9.2
|
14.2
|
13.1
|
12.1
|
high
1/3
|
19.5
|
16.4
|
17.9
|
21.6
|
18.9
|
18.9
|
In terms of the extent to which the schools’ are filling
their enrollment capacity with capacity
defined individually by each school, a picture of underutilized capacity in
two thirds of the sections emerges.
The cost implications are significant since the cost of
offering a section is basically fixed: teacher compensation and facilities
costs.
Options to improve capacity utilization must obviously
include offering fewer sections where this is possible. Schools often take the
position that they need to offer a large range of sections to meet the needs of
diverse learners and to be competitive in their marketplaces.
Another obvious solution is to fill seats in low capacity
sections through enhanced recruitment and retention activities. This should
obviously always be a priority. But in some markets the potential student
populations are already saturated and retention is high.
Fortunately, another emerging powerful solution is for
schools to build their competency in blended classroom instruction and online
instruction to enable fewer, larger sections coincident with more
individualized instruction and high quality student learning. In a blended
classroom, teachers can utilize online resources in a variety of ways to complement
their own teaching: to convey new concepts and/ or reinforce concepts taught in
the classroom through structured exercises tailored to each individual student.
Teachers can also utilize new learning management systems to monitor the
precise degree of mastery of concepts by each student and group students with
common learning needs in small groups so they learn together independently.
The range of online course offerings and curricular
materials is proliferating. Open source learning management systems like Moodle
enable faculty members to put their own blended curricula together . We are on
the cusp of a golden opportunity to blend efficiency and higher quality
learning experiences. Now is the time for active experimentation with blended
learning by all schools.
The
YUSP’s educational technology expert, Dr. Eliezer Jones (ejones1@yu.edu), is
actively exploring all of the available options including commercial platforms
and curricula, open source (free and ability to customize) learning platforms
and curricula, as well as the creation of consortia that pool proven open
source courseware and collaboratively develop affordable and high quality
online curricula in general and Judaic studies. This fall, Dr. Jones will be
facilitating an online certificate program for Jewish Day School educators in
online/blended instruction and design in an effort to build schools’ capacity
to implement these models effectively and efficiently. He is an available
resource as part of the YUSP education team focused on 21st century learning in
Jewish Day Schools. Interested parties can sign up at www.YUeLearning.org to
follow YUSP's work in this area.For additional information or to share your own experiences and thoughts about this topic feel free to contact Dr. Harry Bloom at hbloom1@yu.edu
High schools should also actively consider the creation of
consortia of schools with similar educational aspirations and market and
customer challenges. Having school 1 take the lead in subject A and school 2 in
subject B is a way for schools to capitalize on scarce talent and resources
while learning through active experimentation.
It is only through this kind of purposeful and collaborative
experimentation that we will learn how to achieve the benefits of truly
tailored instruction and learning and efficiency, both critical elements for
sustainable, high quality day schools of the future. “If not now, when?”
*This work is generously supported by The AVI CHAI
Foundation and federations and foundations and schools around the country
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