Abstract

As K–12 (kindergarten through twelfth grade) local education agencies (LEAs) face continued fiscal pressure, noninstructional service consolidation advocates point to states like Florida, with its countywide school systems, as an example of LEAs exploiting scale economies to reduce per-pupil spending, especially in administration and other noninstructional services. This exploratory study uses National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core Data (US Department of Education 2009, 2011) to compare per-pupil spending in states where school districts are organized either by single-LEA counties (e.g., Florida, Maryland) or multiple LEAs per county (e.g., Kansas, Michigan, New York). The findings suggest that, when comparing NCES Comparable Wage Index– adjusted per-pupil spending between the two organizational models, per-pupil spending is significantly lower in general administration and business services, which is expected. However, the results also show statistically significant lower instructional spending in single-LEA counties compared with multiple-LEA counties. Interestingly, when focusing on the proportion of current operating expenditures (COE) allocated to instruction, the findings suggest that local districts in states with single-LEA counties allocate a higher proportion of their COE to instruction than multi-LEA counties.

pdf

Additional Information

ISSN
1944-6470
Print ISSN
0098-9495
Pages
pp. 222-252
Launched on MUSE
2015-03-19
Open Access
No
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.