The Resource Index measures a community's financial commitment to public education and includes such things as teachers' salaries, student-teacher ratios and per pupil expenditures. While important, it has a lesser weight in the final calculations because we feel that a school district should be measured by its results, not by how much money it spent. The Community Index, which measures the economic and educational background of the adult population, has almost no weight in the final calculations, but rather is used as a benchmark for site selectors and other people engaged in evaluating a work force. As a father of four, I wish I had the answer. There's a wide variety of opinions out there.
Some people say the best way to improve schools is to make the class sizes smaller.
Others say it's to spend more money. Again, others say it's to cut back on the size of the school district itself. Just out of curiosity, we decided to look behind the numbers to see what our data showed. Since our ratings are based primarily upon academic achievement, we decided to compare the top 2 percent of the schools in terms of academic achievement with the bottom 2 percent, and to compare them in terms of spending, class size and district size. The results are somewhat surprising, primarily for their lack of significant differentiation.