Introduction

The Common Core of Data (CCD) is an annual collection of public elementary and secondary education data by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. The U.S. Census Bureau conducts the data collection for the finance surveys on behalf of NCES. State education agencies (SEAs) report the finance data through an online data collection site. SEAs report student membership data through the U.S. Department of Education’s EDFacts data collection system.

The purpose of this report is to introduce new data through the presentation of tables containing descriptive information; therefore, the selected findings chosen for this report demonstrate the range of information available when using the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) component of CCD. 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.

This report presents findings on public education revenues and expenditures using fiscal year 2010 (FY 10) data from the provisional version 1a NPEFS file of  the CCD survey system. Programs covered in NPEFS include regular, special, and vocational education; charter schools; and state-run education programs (such as special education centers or education programs for incarcerated youth).

This First Look provides users with an opportunity to access provisional NPEFS data that have been fully reviewed, edited, and imputed.  Final data, including revisions to the provisional data submitted by the SEAs after the close of data collection, will be available during the following collection year (2013). 

In subsequent fiscal years, preliminary NPEFS data will be released in an effort to provide earlier access to the dataset. The preliminary data will be subject to one round of data review and editing. The release of preliminary data will be followed by a release of provisional data.  The provisional data will be an update to the previously released preliminary data, and subject to a more extensive review and editing process. Revisions submitted after the provisional data file is locked will be incorporated in the final file for each fiscal year.  Final data files will be released at the time of the release of  preliminary data for the following year.  

The CCD NPEFS is a state-level universe collection of public elementary and secondary education finance data reported annually by SEAs in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the four U.S. Island Areas of American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The NPEFS provides SEA-level data for all revenues and expenditures associated with each reporting state or jurisdiction, including revenues by source and expenditures by function and object.

SEAs participate in the CCD voluntarily, following standard definitions for the data items they report. In some cases, SEAs may be unable to report a key data item at all or may be unable to report a key data item in exact accordance with a CCD definition. When this happens, NCES imputes or edits values for these items. Please see Appendix A: Methodology and Technical Notes in this report for a detailed discussion of imputations and edits.

While the tables in this report include data for all NPEFS respondents, the discussion in the text is limited to the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

In February of 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The ARRA legislation allocated education funds directly to the states.¹ As a result of the ARRA, NCES added seven data items to NPEFS in order to collect and analyze data pertaining to Title I, Impact Aid, and other ED funds² (Office of the Federal Register 2009). NCES collected ARRA-related data in the NPEFS collection for FY 09, FY 10, and FY 11.

Please see Appendix A for more information about survey content and methodology. Appendix B is a glossary of key terms used in this report.  Please see Appendix C for tables derived from the final FY 09 NPEFS data file (Stfis091b).  The final FY 09 NPEFS data has been included in Appendix C to facilitate longitudinal analysis.
   
More information about CCD surveys and products is available at http://nces.ed.gov/ccd.

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¹ http://www.recovery.gov/About/Pages/The_Act.aspx; retrieved December 15, 2011.
² "Department of Education, Notice of Proposed Information Collection Requests" 74 Federal Register 154 (12 August 2009) pp. 40573-0574; "Department of Education, Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request" 74 Federal Register 197 (14 October 2009) p. 52752.