How Ripple Effects products can pay for themselves in a matter of months

Using results from two effectiveness studies we can show a 900% to 2500% return on investment for Ripple Effects programs after just one year of use!  In other words spend $10000 at one school and you can net a savings of $83,000 to $240,000 on the school’s budget.  How?  By reducing truancy or summer school referrals.  The returns are even higher if you combine the results!

1. Truancy Reduction
In Fall 2003, 527 students in six schools participated in a Ripple Effects effectiveness study in which a test group used the software for seven contact hours over 8 weeks.  The goal was to measure the impact of the software use on Substance Abuse, Discipline/Truancy and Academic Achievement. 

In an effort to see how much revenue could be generated from the reduction in truancy Ripple Effects has compiled a return on investment analysis using the result of this study. The study showed that software and training that cost $8,000 per school, generated on average over $75,000 in increased Average Daily Attendance (ADA) funds from the state per school for just the 40 students in the test group. This resulted in an almost 10X return on the investment for Ripple Effects after just one year.  If applied to an entire school, with all students using the software the revenue increase would be much greater.  

Detailed ROI analysis

Prior to and after the use of the Ripple Effects program attendance at the schools was measured for control (non-users) and test (users) groups at the schools.  On average the test group of almost 200 students, showed 30% better attendance than the control group.  Using just 40 student as a test group and their 30% better attendance equates to 12 more students a day showing up for class – In California this results in a payment to the school of 12 times $35 a day – for a 180 day school year this translates $75,400 per year.  This equates to almost a 10X return on the cost of the Ripple Effects software after one year.

Extrapolating this to an entire school requires some estimates, but for a 1000 students school, assuming just a 10% increase (not the 30% we found) in attendance of nominally 80% creates a conservative model.  In this case the attendance increase from 800 per day to 880 per day.  The revenue increase is then $2800 per day or $504,000 for a 180-day school year. 
A return of 63 times the original investment. Another way of looking at this is that the software, if implemented school wide for a full term so all 1000 students revived the computer-based curriculum, would pay for itself 3 ½ school days.

2. Reduced Summer School referrals
In Spring 2000, The School of the Future, a middle school in New York City, implemented Ripple Effects social learning software and measured its effectiveness. In an effort to quantify how much schools might actually save by investing in Ripple Effects social learning software, we conducted a "Return on Investment" (ROI) analysis based on the findings from the School of the Future study. According to the findings, if extended school-wide, a $10,000 investment could net schools as much as $93,000 per year in savings on remedial summer school, or nearly 10 times the initial investment.

Detailed ROI analysis

Before using the Ripple Effects program, almost a third of the students at the School of the Future were required to attend remedial summer school. We do not have the exact per child summer school costs, but estimate it can't be less than prorated, regular year costs, since teacher-student ratio is lower and school facilities are open, but costs are spread over fewer pupils. Assuming per pupil expenditure for a eight month year is $6,000 on average, and the six week summer program represents 16.67% of the 36 week regular school year, the per pupil cost for remedial summer school can be estimated at $1,000.

The cost of a school site license of Ripple Effects' Ripple Effects for Teens software is just under $10,000, or about $20 per year/per student at a school with 500 students. The cost goes down the following year to a 10% maintenance fee ($1,000). There is no cash outlay for teacher time, since existing staff is used. The program can be used in an individual or group setting, with or without formal teacher facilitation.

In the study conducted by researchers from Columbia and NYU:

• A sample group of kids from School of the Future used the program entirely on their own, during free time, about twice a week for 12 weeks. They were assigned 24 topics to explore. The only investment of teacher time was a few minutes a week to check for completion of assigned topics.
• A second sample group got teacher facilitated discussion and role plays once a week, in addition to the software program, which they used on their own, with the same topics assigned and checked.
• A control group of kids got neither.

Here are the results in economic terms. As you can see, when extrapolated to a whole school, the potential Return On Investment (ROI) is impressive.

Social Return On Investment (SROI) is on top of this

The dramatic reduction in aggression (77% for kids without teacher intervention, more than twice the 32% for kids who received the added teacher intervention), and increase in prosocial behavior (32% for kids without teacher intervention, 22% for kids with the teacher), is on top of this, and has added economic and social implications for savings in school and corrections settings.