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Analyzing School District Finances -- data and tools to assess sources and uses of funds -- new: updated finance data for FY 2006 now available The School District Financial Analyst (SDFA), described in this section, now includes data for fiscal year 2006. The types of data included and features of software are similar across all years. Use interactive state-by-state school district finances ranking tables to view selected sources and uses of funds data for districts of interest. Access ranking tables via left-column links at http://proximityone.com/sddmi.htm. Public school systems received $521.1 billion in funding from federal, state and local sources in 2006, a 6.7 percent increase over 2005 -- $9,138 per student. enrolled in public schools. School district spending per pupil was highest in New York ($14,884), followed by New Jersey ($14,630) and the District of Columbia ($13,446). States where school districts spent the lowest amount per pupil were Utah ($5,437), Idaho ($6,440) and Arizona ($6,472). Of the total expenditures for elementary and secondary education, current spending made up $451 billion (85.7 percent) and capital outlay $59 billion (11.2 percent). These data are based on school district sources and uses of funds that have been collected and summarized by the Census Bureau. What are the impacts and results of these expenditures? How do sources and uses of funds vary by district, state, and region? Educational assessment and accountability systems require financial data in a standardized structure enabling comparison of school districts and areas. Leadership and stakeholders need to be able to assess outcomes through the analysis of financial resources applied -- how much funding is received from what sources and applied in what ways? The Proximity School District Financial Analyst (SDFA) is designed to facilitate analysis of school districts in the context of educational assessment, accountability and revenue/expenditure patterns by type and magnitude. School District Financial Analyst The School District Financial Analyst (SDFA) is an integrated software and database resource designed to support analysis of financial characteristics of one school district, a set of districts compared to one-another, or ranking among a group of districts. SDFA operates on any Windows-based computer. The SDFA database includes data reported by individual school districts and summarized by state education agencies. The core of these data are standardized across states to coordinate with the Census Bureau F-33 school financial data. The SDFA database is updated on a continual basis as individual state data are integrated into the system. Data for all districts are available for the 2000-01 through 2002-03 fiscal years. More recent data are available for many states through the 2003-04 fiscal year and is progressively updated in the database. This is the only source of standardized financial data for K-12 school systems across states, enabling comparison of school districts in different states. SDFA enables you to: • Pick from list/query and view detailed characteristics of any school district. • Access financial detail more extensive than any other source for multi-state districts. • Select a set of districts for peer analysis and display comparative analysis profiles. • Aggregate school district level data to regions and service areas. • Export selected items and automatically integrate these data into shapefiles for mapping. • Integrate other data with items in the SDFA database. Examples of Benefits from Using SDFA Education agencies • How do our district's sources and uses of funds compare to others in our region? • What are typical Federal revenues by category for a district of our size? • How do districts in a multi-district education service area rank based on selected criteria? • What have been the results or impact of selected types of funding programs? Business, associations, research organizations • What are spending trends for construction? -- which districts and regions are spending the most? • What is the demand for insurance products? -- what are salaries, wages, benefits patterns by district and region? Examples of SDFA Operations The SDFA start-up screen appears as shown in the graphic below. Click on one or any combination of districts in the leftmost school district listbox to display a profile set. In this example the RunFromFile option (top center) has been used. Districts listed in the file "largestny.txt" are processed rather than clicking to select districts. The grid in the right section of the screen presents processing results as shown in this graphic. Detailed subject matter displays are written to the Excel file "sdf01.xls." An extended version of the summary presented in the screen below is also created as an Excel file -- see example for largest 25 school districts. 
See details and other data displays. [goto top] |
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