Daily Learning Contract
- Topic: Personal Budget
- Objective: Students will compare one fixed income across three locations and explain how cost targets change a personal budget decision.
- TEKS: d(5)(D)
- Demonstration of Learning: same-$70,000-offer, three-location comparison and Jordan recommendation.
Time: 50 minutes
TEKS: d(5)(D)
Evidence: same-$70,000-offer, three-location comparison and Jordan recommendation
Fixed February 2026 evidence
MIT Living Wage Calculator, one adult/no children:
| Location | Living-wage hourly rate |
|---|---|
| Tulsa County, Oklahoma | $21.23 |
| Dallas County, Texas | $23.31 |
| Los Angeles County, California | $28.92 |
| New York County, New York | $38.21 |
Students compare Dallas with two of the other locations. Fictional Jordan receives the same $70,000 annual before-tax offer in every location so the cost target is the only number that changes. The household scenario and source date stay the same. CareerOneStop is an optional extension.
50-minute flow
- Prediction — 5 min. Rank the four locations before seeing the rates.
- Read the fixed evidence — 8 min. Identify household scenario, date, hourly unit, and source limitation.
- Three-location comparison — 20 min. Use the supplied official annual before-tax targets, then subtract each target from Jordan's fixed $70,000 offer. Do not rebuild the annual target from the rounded hourly display.
- Relocation decision — 12 min. Choose a location for fictional Jordan using the three calculated gaps, two nonfinancial factors, and one question the table cannot answer.
- Submit and clean up — 5 min. Rank three locations, cite one number for the first and last ranks, submit privately, and return materials.
Default digital: one device and calculator per student; a calculator may be shared by a pair. Paper: one two-page landscape packet per student and one collection tray. Students complete individual comparisons.
Monitoring key
The official annual targets are supplied because MIT's displayed hourly values are rounded; hourly × 2,080 will differ slightly. The fixed $70,000 offer is a fictional comparison tool. It does not provide a local salary for an occupation, predict rent, prove affordability for every person, or include a student's desired household.
By minute 25, three calculations should use the supplied annual targets. By minute 40, the recommendation should contain three gaps, two nonfinancial factors, and one unresolved question. If students are behind, use labeled bullets; cut prediction sharing before cutting evidence. Save the same response for recovery.
Access and absence route
All required numbers appear in the packet. Calculator, multiplication table, precomputed annual targets, typed response, annotation, or paper are acceptable. If the live tool is blocked, instruction continues unchanged.