Introduction

This First Look report introduces new data for national and state-level public elementary and secondary revenues and expenditures for fiscal year (FY) 2015. Specifically, this report includes the following 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.¹ 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 other jurisdictions 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 15 NPEFS provisional (version 1a) data file. Data have been subjected to at least two rounds of extensive review and editing. The data also include SEAs' revisions that were submitted before the collection closed.

Revisions submitted after the provisional data file has been locked are incorporated in the final file for each fiscal year. The final file (e.g., FY 14) is released at the same time as the provisional data for the current year (e.g., FY 15).

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. They do not represent all of 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 revised FY 14 tables that were included in the original FY 14 report, updated with data from the final FY 14 NPEFS file. More information about NPEFS and other CCD products is available at http://nces.ed.gov/ccd.

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¹ Finance terms are defined in appendix B, Glossary.