Analysis Compares Districts' Spending, Academic Performance
POSTED: 1:46 pm PDT June 3, 2011
UPDATED: 1:47 pm PDT June 3, 2011
SAN DIEGO -- California's enormously complicated, and notoriously opaque, school financing system often defies understanding and analysis in ways that are accessible to ordinary Californians.Despite decades of efforts to equalize spending in California schools, wide gaps still remain, both among districts, and among schools within those districts. To review differences among districts, California Watch closely examined California Department of Education figures for the current expense of education. The data accounts for each student in attendance in the state's nearly 1,000 school districts in the 2009-10 school year.As the Department of Education notes, there are a variety of ways to calculate per-pupil spending. "Each has advantages and disadvantages, depending on the intended use of the data," the department's website states. "For example, one measure might be useful for comparisons between states, while another measure might be more useful in state budget discussions."
California Watch relied on the current expense of education figures to compare actual spending by districts. The figures cover annual salaries,