Introduction

This First Look report introduces new data for national and state-level public elementary and secondary revenues and expenditures for fiscal year (FY) 2012. Specifically, this report includes findings from the following types of school finance data:

• Revenue and expenditure totals;
• Revenues by source;
• Expenditures by function and object;
• Current expenditures; and
• Current expenditures per pupil.

The expenditure functions include instruction, instructional staff support services, pupil support services, general administration, school administration, operations and maintenance, student transportation, other support services (such as business services), food services, enterprise operations, and total current expenditures. Objects reported within a function include salaries, employee benefits, purchased services, supplies, and equipment.

The finance data used in this report are from the National Public Education Finance Survey (NPEFS), a component of the Common Core of Data (CCD). The CCD is the primary National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) database on public elementary and secondary education in the United States. State education agencies (SEAs) in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the 5 U.S. Island Areas of American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands report these data annually to NCES. The NPEFS instructions ask SEAs to report revenues and expenditures covering prekindergarten through high school public education in regular, special, and vocational schools; charter schools; and state-run education programs (such as special education schools or education programs for incarcerated youth).

The source for the data and findings included in this report is the FY 12 NPEFS provisional data file. Provisional NPEFS data have been subject to at least two rounds of extensive data review and editing; the data may also include revisions made by SEAs in their own review of their finance data that were submitted prior to the close of the collection period. Revisions submitted after the provisional data file has been locked will be incorporated in the final file for each fiscal year, which will be released at the same time as the release of provisional data for the following year.

The purpose of a First Look report is to introduce new data through the presentation of tables containing descriptive information. The selected findings chosen for this report demonstrate the range of information available when using NPEFS. The selected findings do not represent a complete review of all observed differences in the data and are not meant to emphasize any particular issue. While the tables in this report include data for all NPEFS respondents, the selected findings are limited to the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Appendix A describes the survey content and methodology. Appendix B is a glossary of key terms used in this report. Appendix C contains final FY 11 tables that were included in the original FY 11 report updated from the final FY 11 NPEFS file. More information about NPEFS and other CCD products is available at http://nces.ed.gov/ccd.

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