The Challenges to Reimagining Student Transportation
Defining the Challenges to Student Mobility
Current student transportation options are limited to just a few high-cost options that are inflexible, do not support school choice, undermine learner-centered education, are a burden on schools, and keep students and families from high-quality educational options. Misaligned incentives and an unprecedented nationwide shortage of qualified CDL bus drivers means that authentic school choice and equity remains elusive for many. Defining these challenges is critical to identifying solutions.
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Policy and Funding Puzzle
Student mobility faces regulatory complexity, misaligned incentives, administrative hurdles, and various constraints and ambiguities. -
Supply and Demand
Expanding choices and a growing desire for personalized instruction run up against driver shortages, cost increases, and lack of allowable or available options. -
Fragmented Systems
Siloed organizations, uncoordinated and incoherent interventions, and disconnected networks and supply impede progress. -
Gaps in Capacity
Solutions must close data and technology gaps, fill human capital shortages, and change outmoded mindsets.
Challenges: Learn and Understand
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Pieces of the Policy Puzzle
Before identifying solutions for student mobility, we must first untangle a mess of regulatory complexities, administrative hurdles, and misaligned incentives.Read More -
The Problem of Fragmented Systems
Until successful models are adopted more widely, siloes are dismantled, and geography and economic barriers are effectively accounted for, real school choice will not be possible.Read More -
Closing Capacity Gaps
Technology adoption is disparate and too slow, school systems lack the qualified people to run them, and outmoded mindsets continue to perpetuate old ways of operating.Read More -
How Supply and Demand are Misaligned
Driver shortages and increasing costs run up against increasing demand for more choice, parent expectations of service, and specialized transportation needs.Read More
Challenges: Explore Case Studies
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The Problem of “Creeping Service Levels”
Learn how even the best designed systems become more inefficient and more brittle over time if they are under managed.Coming Soon