Analyses (070) Statistical Data (110)

Given the overall annual expenditure of approximately $250 billion on public education in the United States, there is great interest in how these dollars are allocated to states. This brief presents data showing the relationship between access to public-education resources and community wealth across all school districts in the United States for the 1989-90 school year. The data are from a Research and Development Report (T. Parrish and others, 1995) produced by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The brief compares a measure of community wealth--the median income of the households located within school district boundaries--to three alternative measures of resources available to public schools in the district. The measures of available resources include expenditures per student, expenditures converted to education "buying power, " and the average number of students per teacher