Making Every Dollar Count

This report indicates that policy-makers and researchers are examining how the nation’s public schools spend money, and whether the expenditures are connected to their goals of higher academic results. Educators need to think differently about how they track and spend the nearly $500 billion that goes toward American pre-collegiate public education each year. One of the biggest challenges facing policy-makers and administrators is determining how much money is spent on instruction, staffing, and other items at the school level. An accepted method for budgeting school-level resources does not exist. States are moving to connect performance and spending data. Florida is moving to rate schools using a “Return on Investment” index. Using a formula to relate financial resources spent at the school level with measures of student performance, the State generates a percentile ranking of a school’s efficiency and effectiveness.