Education Performance and Spending Dashboard

• Description: This tool includes expenditure data for all School Districts and Charter Schools in the State of Utah.
• Sources: School District and Charter Schools sent the Office of the State Auditor a detailed compensation report for their employees. This data was linked to the Utah State Board of Education's CACTUS data. The Utah Office of the State Auditor aggregated this data and developed the visualizations/tools on this page.
• Timespan: Fiscal Years 2014-2024

To provide a clear and consistent understanding of how funds are allocated, we have categorized and standardized school spending data. This approach allows for meaningful comparisons across different districts and helps stakeholders understand the key drivers of educational costs. The following spending categories were developed to isolate distinct operational functions and funding purposes:

• Actual Cost: Spending on large capital projects, such as new buildings or major renovations. This category is separated to isolate large, infrequent investments from regular operating expenses, providing a clearer picture of day-to-day costs.
• Depreciation and Interest: The loss in value of assets over time. This is an accounting tool used to spread the cost of large capital projects over multiple years, reflecting the asset's useful life rather than booking a single, large expenditure in one year.
• District Specific Expenses: Expenses for programs that are unique to a specific district and cannot be consistently categorized across all Local Education Agencies (LEAs).
• District Wide Expenses: Costs for centralized services that benefit the entire district. This includes administrative functions like IT, accounting, payroll, and human resources.
• Extracurricular: Spending on student activities that fall outside the core academic curriculum, such as athletic teams, clubs, and other after-school programs.
• Instructional Compensation: Compensation for teaching; only wages related to teaching are included
• Instructional Related Expenses: Supplies for instruction, and salaries for employees who are not licensed teachers
• Miscellaneous: Spending that was unable to be categorized due to faulty of incomplete transaction information
• Non K12: Spending related to non k-12 education. This could include pre-school, adult education or community services
• Nutrition Services: Costs associated with school lunches, breakfast programs, and other nutritional services for students.
• Operations, Facilities, and Construction: Costs related to maintaining the physical school environment. This includes utilities, cleaning, routine maintenance, groundskeeping, and salaries for maintenance staff. (Note: Large-scale new construction is captured under 'Actual Cost.'
• School Administration: Salaries for administrators, office secretaries, and other administration
• Special Education Resources: Spending for students with special educational needs
• Student Support Services: Costs for programs that support students' emotional, social, and physical well-being. This includes school nurses, psychologists, social workers, speech-language pathologists, and student counseling.
• Transportation Services: All costs associated with transporting students to and from school, including bus driver salaries, fuel, vehicle maintenance, and fleet management.

Data Sources

• Utah State Board of Education (USBE)
• Student Course Information
• Student Enrollment
• School Information (e.g., location, website, title I status)
Click to visit USBE's data portal
• Transparent Utah
• School/District Expenses
• School/District Revenue
• Districts and Charter Schools
• Payroll Information

About RISE and Aspire Testing

RISE/Aspire Testing measures Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science skills for students at the end of the school year. Aspire testing is only for students in grades 9 & 10, and serves to predict ACT scores.

Utah RISE Testing

Aspire Testing

Note: RISE/Aspire Testing also measures Reading skills, which Project KIDS does not currently report.

Student Characteristics Definitions

Chronically Absent: Students who have missed 10% or more of the days they are enrolled.

English Language Learner (ELL): Students who are learning English or have limited English skills.

Gifted: Students who are eligible for participation in a program for the gifted and talented.

Homeless: Students who are experiencing homelessness ranging from 1) staying with another family member because of loss of housing or economic hardship, to 5) staying somewhere without adequate facilities (running water, heat, electricity).

Low Income: Students who are economically disadvantaged based on family income status and may be eligible for free or reduced lunches.

Migrant: Students who are immigrants.

Mobile: Students who have one or more enrollment records with less than 160 days of membership.

Special Education: Students who have a special education designation (e.g., Autism, Speech Language Impairment, and Intellectual Disability).

General Information & Demographics

School and District locations and information were gathered from the USBE website, and student and teacher counts were calculated using course records; a student or teacher is included in this count if they took/taught at least one class in the selected school or district. The student count can be slightly different from enrollment counts because a student may be enrolled in one school but may also take a class in another school. Class size was calculated by taking the average of the student count for each class in the school/district. Classes are defined as a unique combination of Term, Cycle, Class Period, and Course Section, which are part of course records. AP, Concurrent Enrollment (CE), Dual Language Immersion (DLI), and IB class lists were gathered using core code information found on the USBE website and course records.

Student demographics were calculated using student enrollment records gathered from the USBE. Records containing information from 10 or fewer students were removed to protect student privacy.

Test Scores

Test score data for each student from the RISE/Aspire, AP, Financial Literacy, and ACT tests came from the USBE. Average testing scores for each school/district were calculated, masking any information that contained data from 10 or fewer students.

Total & Per Student Spending

School districts and charters submit their expenses to Transparent Utah. Project KIDS uses the data that these entities submit along with more detailed payroll information that districts submit to the Utah Office of the State Auditor for Project KDIS. Data is cleaned and standardized.

Rather than dividing total school/district spending evenly among all students, Project KIDS weighted students based on the amount of time each student spent in a given school by using students' course enrollment information. This allowed us to determine the proportion of a school year that each student was present in a given school. For example, if a student is only in a school for the first half of the year, they will be given half of the resources that a student enrolled in the whole year will receive

Project KIDS also broke down school expense and payroll information into twelve major categories based on financial account codes.

By taking the student weights and subcategory designations together, Project KIDS was able to build a detailed account of student resources, and then aggregate that up to the school and district levels. Expenses on this dashboard may differ from other organization's accounts because of this methodology.