According to Standard and Poor's, the national total revenues per student were $10.523 in 2006, broken down as follows:

• Local government: 44%
• State government: 47% 
• Federal government: 9% 

The Census revenue data published on the SchoolDataDirect website was not collected for accounting purposes, and the data excludes information on debt liquidation and private trust transactions. This means that you should not use the data to calculate budget or financial statements. Because of the difficulty of collecting the data, the information is not the most current. The most recent data available on the SchoolDataDirect site is from 2005. While, more recent revenue data is available on the U.S. Census Bureau website, the most current data can typically be found from local sources.

One important caution, revenue data does not allow you to figure out how specific revenue dollars were spent. You cannot, for instance, evaluate how Title I money was spent at a particular school or district. To get that type of information, you should contact your district budget office.

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How do states fund education?
Every state has a different way of funding education. Some use only categorical programs (funding specific programs or students), while others use foundation formulas (i.e., general aid). The newspaper Education Week recently released a report that examines how each state funding system works. The information is free to registered users. You should be sure to take the time to figure out the basics of the state funding system to understand how your state doles out its education dollars.

Can revenue data be broken down?
District revenues should be examined by source and program, so that you have a solid understanding of the sources of funds. The data should also be looked at on a total and per-pupil basis. To calculate a per-pupil basis, the revenue data should be divided by the total number of students. For the most part, Standards and Poor's reports revenues on a per-pupil basis.

How does my district's sources of revenue compare to other districts?
You can compare your district's revenue sources to that of surrounding districts, similar districts, and the average district within your state to determine if you are being provided similar funds from state and federal sources. You can then use that information to advocate for the dollars needed to provide the highest education for your students.

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Across the nation, local revenue sources provide about 40 percent of all education dollars: This ranges from a low of 8 percent in Vermont to a high of 65 percent in Nevada. While cities and counties typically raise these funds through property taxes, they also rely on other measures, like school fees and sales tax. Local school districts will usually distribute these funds to schools on a weighted per-pupil basis. The SchoolDataDirect website shows the distribution of local revenue sources for every state and district in the country.

States typically provide about 50 percent of local education funds. Each state has its own system for distributing these funds to school districts, and the formulas can be very complex. In Washington State, for instance, everything from school enrollment to the experience of staff is used to figure out how much money each school district receives each year. Oregon's School Finance 101 offers brief online tutorials to help district leaders get a better handle on how the state distributes its education money.

The federal government is usually the source of about 10 percent of local education dollars. The most well-known source of federal education dollars is Title I of the No Child Left Behind/Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is slated for schools and districts with high percentages of poor children. The U.S. Department of Education's Title I document offers more information on Title I funding. However, other major sources of federal education dollars include the Child Nutrition Act, which helps pay for school lunch programs, and the Individuals with Disabilities Act, which assists children with disabilities—both of which actually provide a greater amount of revenue than Title I.

To produce state-level revenue values, Standard and Poor's calculates a weighted average of the total revenues of all the districts in the state. To produce national-level results, they calculate the weighted average of total revenues of all the states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. If you want to gain access to raw, state-level revenue information, you can download the information from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) website. If you want raw, district-level data, you can download the information as an Excel spreadsheet from U.S. Census document, public elementary-secondary education finance data. Note, however, that Standard and Poor's, Census, and NCES data may differ from information released by states and districts because of reporting differences. You should also know that the Census database has some definition issues. For instance, Vermont reports spotty district-level expenditure data, because the state does not consider its supervisory unions to be districts. For their part, Hawaii and the District of Columbia also consider their school systems to be a single, unified district.

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