Schools embracing business principles to measure performance

As most public schools struggle to recover the profound learning loss tied to the pandemic, students in Colorado’s Boulder Valley School District are racing ahead, leaving the dark days of COVID behind.

Boulder Valley’s notable 2024 test scores, which easily surpassed its math and reading marks in 2019, are not the result of a newfangled education theory but instead involve a bedrock principle of American business: Return on Investment.

Academic ROI (AROI) is a data-driven approach...