In this appendix, two members of the Governance, Accountability, and Resource Allocation team generated a new possibility for how resource allocation could enable young people to dynamically access resources as they move through their learning journey, accessing varied learning opportunities and experiences within their communities.

By Jennifer Davis Poon & Todd Smith

From a financial perspective, the current education system in America lacks efficiency. Attempts to measure productivity and return on investment consistently demonstrate no relationship between the amount of education spending and learner outcomes. The very design of funding formulas treats every student the same, as merely a warm body regardless of unique needs and interests. The educational institutions that receive these funds serve up essentially identical programming to every warm body regardless of its relevance to their long-term aspirations.

Now imagine instead a learner-centered ecosystem in which each young learner embarks on their own learning journey, leading toward their long-term aspirations for their career, civic participation, and who they want to become as a person. Imagine that their educational experience is not one of passive receipt of one-size-fits-all programming but rather one of active engagement in learning experiences, which may span multiple digital and physical locations in their community, tailored to their short-term needs and relevant and valuable to their long-term trajectory.

Imagine the financial efficiencies possible in such a targeted system of learning. Instead of rote funding formulas and standard programming, suppose learners could dynamically tap into funds in order to access whichever learning opportunities are needed and relevant to them at a given time.

Further, imagine that those funds came from a “bigger pie” than today’s narrow view of education finance and included all of the resources and assets being invested in human development in an ecosystem, such as community college funds; municipal or philanthropic spending on education, youth development, or afterschool care; spending on preventative healthcare; corrections and rehabilitation budgets; and local industry spending on training and employee development. So many independent sources of funding might seem impossible to track, let alone smartly allocate learner by learner according to their unique learning needs and plans. But what if there were an app for that?

Imagine an “Opportunity App” that animates and streamlines resource allocation across the learner-centered ecosystem. First, suppose the entire learner-centered ecosystem undertook a detailed asset-mapping exercise to catalog existing capital. This would include all funding streams, grant programs, and investments being made in promoting the learning, development, and holistic well-being of individuals (young and old) in the ecosystem. It would also include nonfinancial investments like physical facilities and free digital platforms, as well as people-powered investments such as pro-bono service providers, mentors, volunteers, graduate students, and individuals completing service hours.

Now imagine algorithms powered by artificial intelligence that comb this back-end data and match available opportunities with individuals who need them according to their current learning and developmental goals. Suppose that learners routinely log into the app and, together with their family and learning advisor, browse and select learning opportunities to pursue now, six months from now, or even years from now. A touch of a button sets a chain of actions in motion that coordinate and make available the resources needed for each learning opportunity.

Suppose the back-end information came not from a one-off audit but was continually crowdsourced, with managers and promoters of those programs and investments able to input and steward their own data. Suppose they could indicate what they want in return from their investments and log on to see their impact in real time. Further imagine that the app can run algorithms that identify redundancies where investments can be combined or reallocated to produce savings, or gaps where not enough resources are invested to meet community needs. Suppose it can flag these kinds of redundancies or gaps for the ecosystem governance system to address.

Lastly, imagine it is not only young learners who use this app, but that the user base steadily grows to support adult learning and workforce development comprehensively. No app like this exists today, but the technology does. It just takes members of an ecosystem to bring it to life.