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Data | BEST NC updates School Spending Data Explorer

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The 2024 update of the School Spending Data Explorer is now live, featuring, for the first time, the ability to explore changes in school and district spending over time. 

BEST NC’s interactive data explorer allows education stakeholders to explore per pupil funding trends across individual schools, within districts, and across districts in North Carolina. Educators, school leaders, parents, policymakers, advocates, and other members of the public can utilize this tool to examine education spending and student outcomes for similar schools based on size, grade level, geography, percent students with disabilities, poverty, and more.

How to use the data explorer

There are two major components of the tool: a scatterplot feature that compares spending to other education factors like student achievement and poverty, and a line graph tool that compares spending over time. More details on how to use the tool below.

Comparing school spending over time

For the first time this year, the data explorer includes a new line graph feature that allows users to see spending trends over time (2018-19 to 2022-23). This new addition allows stakeholders to track federal, state, and local school expenditures for their school or district and gauge the impact of COVID relief funds on school spending across the state.

Here is a guide with more information.

Comparing school spending with student characteristics

The data explorer also includes a scatterplot feature that allows user to examine school spending in relationship to other key indicators like school poverty and student achievement. By comparing schools with similar characteristics, school leaders and other education stakeholders can identify schools with strong student performance at varying levels of funding and/or relative to the characteristics of their student body. Promising or innovative practices from these schools might then be examined to help improve teaching and learning in similar schools.

For example, users can narrow the analysis to include all elementary schools where at least 60% of students qualify as economically disadvantaged, and then examine schools with strong student growth numbers and modest per pupil expenditures. 

Here is a guide with more information.

Users can also hover over any school to see a display of data pertaining to that school.

With the release of school-level expenditure data, and with the help of BEST NC’s School Spending Data Explorer, North Carolinians can explore trends in school spending at the school level, instead of being limited to district-level metrics. Several insights from the data are highlighted on the data explorer’s landing page. Below is one example which reveals that schools in the highest poverty quartile in North Carolina receive 23% more funding per pupil than schools in the lowest poverty (most affluent) quartile. 

We hope this tool is helpful to you as you continue your work, and thank you for sharing it with your network.

Click here to access the data explorer.