U.S. Department of Education

Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development

Policy and Program Studies Service

Results in Brief:

Exploring the Quality of School-Level Expenditure Data:

Practices and Lessons Learned in Nine Sites

January 2017

Concerns about the equitable distribution of school funding within school districts have led to new federal data collections on schoollevel expenditures through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), and the 

National Center for Education Statistics’ pilot School-Level Finance Survey. In addition, the Every Student Succeeds Act, enacted in 

December 2015, amended Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to require, among other things, state 

educational agencies and local educational agencies (LEAs) to report school-level per-pupil expenditure data on state and LEA report 

cards. School-level expenditure data are useful for examining the extent to which resources are distributed equitably across schools 

and may also help practitioners and researchers better understand associations between spending patterns and student outcomes

and identify cost-effective practices. 

However, the quality and utility of current school-level expenditure data are uncertain, and many school districts do not have 

experience in systematically tracking expenditures at the school level. This study explores the feasibility of improving the collection of 

school-level expenditure data by examining the nature and quality of school-level fiscal data collection in five states and four school 

districts that had developed their own systems for collecting and reporting school-level expenditures: Florida, Hawaii, Ohio, Rhode 

Island, Texas, Baltimore City, Hillsborough County, Houston, and Los Angeles.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. In states and districts that have developed systems to 

report expenditures at the school level, what types of 

personnel and non-personnel expenditures are included 

in the school-level data?

2. To what extent do the sites track actual expenditures to 

individual schools versus allocating or pro-rating 

expenditures to schools using formulas?

3. How consistent are school-level expenditure data 

obtained from these systems with similar data from other 

sources? How do the funding amounts attributed to 

individual schools based on formula allocations compare 

to those based on tracking actual expenditures?

4. What lessons can other states and districts learn from 

these sites if they wish to implement systems for 

reporting accurate and reliable data on school-level 

expenditures?

STUDY DESIGN

The study included (1) surveys and interviews of officials to 

understand the process of collecting school-level expenditure 

data and (2) collection and analysis of school-level spending 

data to examine data quality issues. The study examined 

three aspects of data quality: the comprehensiveness of 

school-level spending data, consistency with other data 

sources, and the relative accuracy of allocating expenditures 

to schools by formula (rather than tracking actual 

expenditures for each school).

Because of differences in the data submitted by the sites, some 

of the analyses and findings do not include all nine sites.

Highlights

• Study sites reported that they attributed most categories of 

spending to the school level, including salaries for teachers, 

administrators, and other support staff, as well as nonpersonnel items such as textbooks, instructional materials, 

furniture and equipment, and computers and software.

• The school districts and states in this study attributed an 

average of three quarters of operational expenditures to 

individual schools, demonstrating that it is feasible to link a 

significant share of spending to the school level.

• Most of the expenditures that the study sites attributed to 

schools were directly tracked to schools (85 percent) rather 

than simply being allocated by formula (8 percent). 

• Comparisons between the site-reported school-level 

expenditures and other data sources showed a relatively 

high degree of consistency for salary expenditures, but nonpersonnel expenditure data were much less consistent. 

• Allocating expenditures to schools by formula (based on 

total salaries or staff) appeared relatively accurate for health 

benefits and less accurate for pension benefits, pupil 

support staff, and instructional support staff.

• Instituting a system for collecting school-level expenditure 

data typically required new hardware and software (eight 

sites), changes to charts of accounts (six sites), and staff 

training (eight sites).

• Interviewees advised others aiming to implement an 

accounting system capable of capturing school-level 

expenditures to ensure that stakeholders are involved early, 

communicate clearly and frequently, and think about future 

data needs in the long term.
EXPENDITURE ATTRIBUTION PRACTICES

The states and districts in this study have developed 

accounting systems that report large shares of their total 

operational expenditures at the individual school level.

In interviews and surveys, officials from all nine sites reported 

attributing most expenditure categories to the school level, 

including salaries for teachers, administrators, and other 

support staff, as well as non-personnel items such as textbooks, 

other instructional materials, furniture and equipment, and 

computers and software.

Fiscal data provided by the sites confirmed that expenditures 

attributed to schools accounted for a large proportion of total

operational expenditures, ranging from 69 percent in three 

sites to 89 percent in two sites, with an average of 77 percent 

across eight study sites. A larger share of personnel 

expenditures was attributed to schools (85 percent) than for 

non-personnel expenditures (53 percent). 

Most of the expenditures that the study sites attributed to 

schools were directly tracked to schools rather than simply 

being allocated by formula.

On average, across eight of the study sites, 85 percent of 

expenditures were tracked to schools and 8 percent were 

allocated. Five sites indicated that the method for attributing 

expenditures to schools sometimes varied within a category 

(4 percent of all expenditures attributed to schools in the 

eight sites). In four sites, the attribution method was not clear 

for some of the expenditures (3 percent).

Personnel expenditures were more often directly tracked to 

schools than were non-personnel expenditures (90 percent 

vs. 60 percent).

RELIABILITY OF THE DATA

Comparisons between the site-reported school-level 

expenditures and other data sources showed a relatively 

high degree of consistency for salary expenditures, but nonpersonnel expenditure data were much less consistent.

Site-provided data on total salary costs differed from 

equivalent data from the National Center for Education 

Statistics School District Finance Survey (F-33) by only 

2 percent on average, but non-personnel expenditures 

differed by a much greater margin (21 percent).

Similarly, comparisons with CRDC data found that school-level 

salary expenditures based on the site-reported data differed by 

an average of 12 percent for salary expenditures but 129 

percent for non-personnel expenditures.

Allocating expenditures to schools by formula (based on 

total salaries or staff) appeared relatively accurate for 

health benefits and less accurate for pension benefits, pupil 

support staff, and instructional support staff.

To assess the accuracy of allocating expenditures to schools 

by formula, we simulated allocations of spending for several 

expenditure categories that most of the study sites reported as 

being tracked to schools and compared those amounts with 

actual tracked expenditure amounts reported by the sites. The 

expenditure category for which simulated allocations most poorly 

matched schools’ actual tracked expenditures was instructional 

support, which differed by an average of 51 percent when prorated to schools based on full-time equivalent (FTE) staff and 53 

percent when allocated based on enrollment.

Simulated allocations most closely approximated actual tracked 

expenditures for health benefits (differing by 10 to 12 percent, 

depending on allocation metric). Moderate differences were 

found for retirement benefits (14 to 18 percent) and pupil 

support staff (29 to 33 percent). 

Benefit allocations were more accurate when based on shares 

of total salaries rather than on shares of FTEs. Instructional and 

pupil support allocations were more accurate when based on 

FTEs than when based on student enrollment.

LESSONS LEARNED

Advice that interviewees offered for others aiming to 

implement similar school expenditure reporting systems 

was to get stakeholders involved, communicate clearly and 

frequently, and think long term about future data needs.

Instituting a system for collecting school-level expenditure data 

typically required new hardware and software (eight sites), 

changes to charts of accounts (six sites), and staff training 

(eight sites).

Surveyed site officials most commonly identified staff capacity 

and training needs as a major challenge in implementing 

systems for tracking school-level expenditures. The most 

commonly identified challenge that sites continued to face was 

in tracking specific types of expenditures. To promote data 

reliability, study sites relied most heavily on staff training (eight 

sites), data reviews (seven sites), and automated error checks in 

their respective software systems (six sites).

STUDY LIMITATIONS

The study relied largely on expenditure data that were collected 

and reported according to the individual sites’ own policies, 

practices, and needs. Data differences across sites resulted in 

some sites being excluded from portions of the quantitative 

analysis. In some cases, spending for a particular category was 

absent from the data provided because it was managed by a 

state agency other than the site itself (e.g., pension benefits 

administered by a state finance department). Additionally, one 

site did not participate fully in the qualitative data collection.

The determination of whether expenditures were tracked or 

allocated to individual schools was based on self-reporting by 

study sites. Sites were asked about the method of attribution 

(tracking or allocation) of relatively large categories of 

expenditures, and a site’s attribution method may have 

sometimes varied within a category. In some cases, 

respondents explained this variation to interviewers, but there 

may be other cases where this was not recorded.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The complete report is available at

www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html.