Data & Analysis
About this page: Available here are data on federal funding, demographics and student achievement for every school district in the country. Hold your cursor over any state below to get summary data; click on that state to see more-detailed funding, achievement and demographic breakdowns, and to drill down to individual districts within that state. (Depending on your browser, you may need to click on the map to activate the Flash application.)
States at a Glance
Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming
Find Your District
Get all the details for a particular district -- including indirect aid, NCLB Title I funding, student demographics and more.
National Rankings
The links below provide at-a-glance assessments of how states compare in several key areas, as well as the Federal Education Budget Project's analysis of the disparities' significance and likely causes:
Researcher Download
All of the funding, demographic, and achievement data presented on this website is available for download, allowing you to conduct your own research and analysis and reach your own conclusions. You can access any individual state's data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet below, or via links on each state and district page throughout the site. Also available here is a national spreadsheet that contains over a quarter million cells of data for all 50 states.
Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming
Per-Pupil Expenditure. Statewide per-pupil expenditure equals the total amount of revenue paid out by school systems in the state divided by total school enrollment. It includes funds from federal, state, and local sources and funds spent on day to day operating expenses, such as teacher salaries, and capital expenses, such as school construction.
School Finance Inequity. School finance equity figures presented reflect a definition contained in Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act. That definition examines the differences in per-pupil spending among school districts across a given state. The per-pupil expenditure for every school district is compared to the average per-pupil expenditure for the state and weighted according to size and poverty level.
Indirect Aid. Indirect aid is support provided for school districts through the federal tax code. For example, a community can use local property taxes to finance local schools, and it costs taxpayers less because local property taxes are deductible on federal income tax returns.
Direct Aid. Direct aid is education funding that comes from the federal government and is distributed directly to states and then given to individual school districts. The two largest direct aid funding streams are the federal Title I program for disadvantaged students and the IDEA special education program for children with disabilities.
Title I. Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act authorizes direct aid from the federal government to states and school districts to support the additional education needs of children from low-income families.
IDEA. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) authorizes direct aid from the federal government to states and school districts to support the additional education needs of children with disabilities.
Student Poverty Rate. The student poverty rate reflects the number of children in a state ages 5 to 17 living beneath the Census Bureau's poverty line. In 2004, the poverty income threshold for a family of four was $19,157.
Achievement. State-defined proficiency standards of what students should know and be able to do in each grade are developed separately by each state. States use these standards to test and assess whether students are performing adequately, as required under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Nationally-defined proficiency standards of what students should know and be able to do are developed by the National Assessment Governing Board. The Board administers a national test to a representative sample of students-the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)-that measures whether students are performing at grade level.
Percentage figures presented reflect the proportion of students learning at grade level according to state NCLB and national NAEP standards, respectively.
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