One would hope that as benefit costs increase, districts would correspondingly bump up their overall K-12 spending to ensure at least as much funding gets to classrooms as before. Unfortunately, that is not the case across the country or in the vast majority of states. In our new report, "Benefits Take Larger Bite out of District K-12…

The inter-district school choice law in Massachusetts was passed in 1991. Its two main goals were to provide education options to Massachusetts parents and children, and to spur competition among districts. School choice allows school districts to enroll non-resident pupils from other districts at a tuition cost that starts at $5,000 but averages…

When it comes to education, not all spending is equal. Some education dollars are spent more productively than others. In a time of lagging revenues and flat achievement in many districts, policymakers have increasingly started to pay greater attention to the question of whether education systems are getting the most out of every education dollar.…

In this report, the author constructs the first ever estimates for each state and the District of Columbia of the short-run fixed costs of educating children in public schools. He endeavors to make cautious overestimates of these short-run fixed costs. The United States' average spending per student was $12,450 in 2008-09. The author estimates…

How do salaries of elementary and middle school principals compare with those of other administrators and classroom teachers? Are increases in salaries of principals keeping pace with increases in salaries of classroom teachers? How have principals' salaries fared over the years when the cost of living is taken into account? There are reliable…

This report reviews high school dropout rates and related factors in rural high schools throughout 15 Southern and Southwestern states. These schools are in districts that are among the 800 rural districts with the highest student poverty rate nationally. Seventy-seven percent of the "Rural 800" districts and 87 percent of the students in them are…

For the 2000-01 school year, $94,137 was reported as the mean of assistant superintendents' average salaries and $77,768 as the mean of directors' of finance and business average salaries. Salaries are affected by geographic region, enrollment size, and per-pupil spending. Increases have kept up with CPI cost of living increases. (MLH)

This paper outlines reasons for the apparent discrepancy between public- and private-school cost per student. The paper compares one public and one private school system in Palm Beach, Florida--Palm Beach County Schools and Lake Worth Christian Schools. It argues that public schools are more expensive because of the many categories of student…

This study empirically tests the notion that consolidating smaller public school districts will save taxpayers money. Multiple regression analyses are employed to analyze the relationship between district size and per-pupil expenditures in the state of Michigan, focusing on the five most recent school years for which data are available. The…

This report examines school district size and organization in South Carolina and their impact on student achievement and fiscal efficiency. A brief overview discusses the history of school district organization since the Civil War, the current distribution of districts across size categories in South Carolina and the nation, variations in school…

Evaluation of out-of-district special education placement costs in the 15 largest Massachusetts public school districts found the criterion school district (which had developed a system-wide approach to behavioral intervention) had the lowest per capita cost, lowest percentage of total school budget consumed by out-of-district placements, and the…

This document is one of a series of reports based on the Special Education Expenditure Project, a study of the nation's spending on special education and related services based on analysis of data for the 1999-2000 school year. This report focuses on general patterns of variation in total spending on special education students across districts…

The Manitoba Government Support to Education (GSE) Program of public school funding was implemented in 1985 to enhance equity in Manitoba schools. Analysis of financial data from all 47 school divisions prior to and during the first 3 years of GSE implementation reveals that GSE reduced financial equity, particularly for rural school divisions.…

Maine should be very proud of its public school system. Without question, since passage of the Sinclair Act in 1957, Maine has made great strides in the last 45 years in improving the quality of its public schools, and in expanding educational opportunities for more and more of its children. Maine citizens have increased their investment four-fold…

Questions about effects of consolidation on Iowa's small schools can be answered through historical review and current assessment of nine small districts. By 1966, Iowa's 1912 School Consolidation Law and subsequent legislation had reduced 4,500 taxing units to 455, with each district offering K-12 programs to a total enrollment of at least 300…