Making Money Matter Financing America's Schools (1999) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Appendix A: Data Needs
Appendix A: Data Needs
Pages 315-325
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 315... ...
Much less attention has been directed to collecting finance and related data needed to understand in a sophisticated way how financial resources are linked to particular educational programs and to the performance of schools and students. For example, we have come to understand how much revenue each school district receives from various local, state, federal, and philanthropic sources.
|
From page 316... ...
We conclude with some thoughts about the resources NCES will need to follow through on these suggestions. TYPES OF DATA COLLECTED The core of the NCES current school finance data program is information on revenues and expenditures for every state and school district, collected annually from state administrative records.
|
From page 317... ...
We were not able to undertake detailed analysis of the feasibility, trade-off, and cost considerations that NCES will need to address before making decisions about additional data to be sought; rather, we suggest some key areas that should be explored as instruments are developed to link finance data more closely to issues of student and school performance. Outcome Data Outcome data are clearly central in evaluating school performance and its connection with finance.
|
From page 318... ...
"Off Budget" Data To link school finance to educational performance, and not just track the appropriate use of public funds, requires new attention to counting all the financial resources that may be available to schools. Traditional school finance data collection instruments will not be sufficient for this task, as nontraditional streams of revenue become increasingly available to schools.
|
From page 319... ...
Equity-Related Data Issues While many of the demands for new school finance data arise from the need to link finance more closely to educational productivity, NCES statistics are also vital for continued monitoring of the distribution of education resources. One avenue for new data development is taxable wealth and tax rates; it is at present impossible on a national basis to link school spending to the ability and effort of state and local governments to provide educational revenues.
|
From page 320... ...
LEVEL OF EDUCATION ABOUT WHICH DATA ARE COLLECTED In the past, school finance data, especially on a national basis, have been collected almost exclusively at the state and school district level. Growing concern about educational performance, however, has heightened the demand for all kinds of data, including finance data, to be collected at the school level, as efforts to decentralize decision making to principals, teachers, and parents move forward.
|
From page 321... ...
NCES can play an important role in helping states learn from one another's efforts, in developing standards for states to use if they wish, and in supporting the development of school-based data collection software, which is not cost-effective for individual states or private companies to create. At the same time, NCES can use data collection instruments other than its national census surveys to explore the feasibility and usefulness of gathering financial resource data at the school, classroom, and individual student level for use in illuminating educational productivity questions.
|
From page 322... ...
METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION NCES finance data have in the past been collected through the agency's nationwide, census-type surveys of all states and school districts. While these surveys continue to be important for tracking revenue and expenditure data, they are not the only or even the best way of gathering the kind of statistics that will help illuminate productivity issues.
|
From page 323... ...
Demographic data provide crucial mediating variables in the quest to understand how school finance is linked to school performance, but until recently we have been dependent on the decennial census for demographic data, which is thus outdated almost as soon as it becomes available. The Census Bureau is currently developing the American Community Survey (ACS)
|
From page 324... ...
, NCES is already taking innovative steps to make education statistics more usable to practitioners. A good example is the peer search feature, which allows web users to select a school district and see how its finances compare with a group of peer districts, on the basis of characteristics such as enrollment, student/teacher ratio, median household income, district type, and metro status.
|
From page 325... ...
The only way in which NCES could begin to comply with the added expectations for education that have evolved over the last decade is through the creative construction of the Education Statistics Services Institute and by relying heavily on outside contract vendors. As a consequence, NCES personnel have been converted from statisticians and researchers into contract managers.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.