The National
Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) is an annual state-level
collection of revenue and expenditure data for public education
in grades prekindergarten through 12. It is part of the Common
Core of Data (CCD) collection of surveys of administrative records
data relating to public elementary and secondary education. These
data are for fiscal year 2003, which in most states began on July
1, 2002, and ended on June 30, 2003. The fiscal year in Alabama
started on October 1, and in Nebraska and Texas the fiscal year
started on September 1. Revenues and expenditures are audited after
the close of the fiscal year and are then submitted to NCES by
each state education agency. NCES collects explanations for all
missing and zero values from states. The data are processed and
edited by NCES and verified by staff at each state education agency
(SEA). NCES also publishes state totals from the school district-level
finance data from the "Local Education Agency Finance
Survey (F-33)." Those data will not agree with the data in this
report due to the exclusion of some state education programs from
the Census Bureau collection and minor differences in data definitions.
Guam did not report any data for school year 2002–03.
Total expenditures include all types of expenditures by school
districts and other public elementary/secondary education agencies.
Researchers generally use current expenditures instead of total
expenditures when comparing education spending between states or
across time because current expenditures exclude expenditures for
capital outlay, which tend to have dramatic increases and decreases
from year to year. Also, the current expenditures commonly reported
are for public elementary and secondary education only. Many school
districts also support community services, adult education, private
education, and other programs, which are included in total expenditures.
These programs and the extent to which they are funded by school
districts vary greatly both across states and within states.
NCES has made adjustments for missing data. Values that were
missing and not reported elsewhere on a state's survey form were
imputed. The method used for all imputations was to (a) create
a subset of states reporting the item in question; (b) subtract
the value for that item from each state's total expenditures; (c)
for each state, compute the ratio of that item to the reduced total
from step b; (d) compute the average of these ratios; (e) multiply
the total expenditures of the state with the missing item by the
average ratio; and (f) substitute the imputed estimate for the
missing item and then recompute the subtotals and totals. Imputed
data represent less than 2 percent of the expenditures in any state
for which data were imputed.
Other adjustments were made when a single value was reported
for a combination of two or more items. NCES distributed portions
of the single state reported value to the missing item(s). In most
cases, these distribution adjustments did not affect total revenues
or total expenditures. For more information on these adjustments,
the reader should refer to the documentation for the National Public
Education Financial Survey: School Year 2002–03, stfis030c data
file. Student membership data came from the CCD State Nonfiscal
Survey, st021b data file.
The number of prekindergarten students was imputed in Alabama,
California, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. As a result, total student
counts for these states are flagged as imputed, and all expenditure
per pupil figures are flagged as imputed even if the expenditures
are exactly as reported by the state.
NCES accepts revisions to these data from state education agencies
for 1 year, and releases the revised data at the end of this period.
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