Accessing Information

1
Accessing Information

• School Finance Policy

2
Published Research Articles

• KU Libraries
• Phase I Creating the shopping list
• Article First
• Eric/EconLit
• Phase II On site shopping
• Option 2 Online shopping
• Wilson Full Text
• Includes Educational Evaluation and Policy
  Analysis and Journal of Education Finance (recent
  issues)
• JSTOR
• Includes older issues, especially economics
  journals

3
Online Reports Research

• When in doubt Google it!
• Got to www.google.com
• Select advanced search
• Select File Format PDF
• Enter search phrase
• cost of an adequate education in nebraska
• Google it!

4
Legal Research (Cases)

• KU libraries (www.lib.ku.edu)
• Alphabetical list of databases
• Academic Universe (Lexis-Nexis)
• Legal research
• Get a case or State case law
• Usually want to focus on High court decisions
• Enter case name and search

5
Data from National Sources

• National center for education statistics
• Education Finance Information
• www.nces.ed.gov/edfin
• School District Demographic data
• http//nces.ed.gov/surveys/sdds/
• Getting your state
• Go to data download
• Select your state
• Select relevant variables

6
Data from National Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau
• Public Elementary and Secondary Finance Data
• http//www.census.gov/govs/www/school.html
• Select year
• For MS Excel file, select CSV option
• Will download exe file of entire country
• States will be separated into three files (al-ma,
  mi-nd, oh-wy)
• Open MS Excel
• Open file through Excel (File Open, View All
  Files)
• Use Auto filter on State Variable to select
  your state

7
Important F-33 Variables

• SCHLEV where 3 indicates K-12 unified district
• V33 district enrollment
• TSTREV total state revenue (000s)
• TLOCREV total local revenue (000s)
• So, state and local revenue per pupil is
• (TSTREV x 1000 TLOCREV x 1000)/V33

8
Using Demographic and Financial Data Together

• Merging
• Create separate Excel files of the Financial
  (F-33) variables you want and demographic
  variables
• Financial
• State revenue
• Local revenue
• Enrollment
• Demographic
• Median household income (household data)
• Median housing unit value (household data)
• Percent in poverty

9
Using Demographic and Financial Data Together

• Merging
• Arrange the files side by side and sort by
  district ID (should be a comparable U.S. census
  ID variable)
• Compare lists to discern whether all of the same
  districts exist on both lists
• If they do, youre in luck and you can simply
  copy and paste the data together.
• If not, you may have to scroll through and insert
  missing district names in one data set, or delete
  them from the other so that any given district is
  on the same line in each data set.
• Note If you are savvy with MS Access, you can
  merge import the excel files and merge them on a
  common variable. You can also do this in
  statistical software.

10
State Dept. of Education Data

• School Finance Data
• Revenues, Expenditures, Property Wealth, Income
  etc.
• Combining state school finance data with national
  data
• It may be possible to sort districts and combine
  them by names where common IDs dont exist

11
Other Cool National Data Tools

• NCES Peer Search Tool
• http//www.nces.ed.gov/edfin/search/search_intro.a
  sp
• NCES/US Census Demographic GIS Mapping
• http//maps.nces.ed.gov/sddsgis/
• NCES Local Education Agency Universe Survey
• Includes student and staffing data on every
  district in the country

12
Other Useful Information Sites

• www.taxpolicycenter.org
• State by state comparisons of tax policy and
  revenues
• www.accessednetwork.org
• Information on school finance litigation and
  education cost studies

13
Sorting in Excel

• Highlight the data and labels
• Select Sort from the Data menu
• From the pop-up window, select which column to
  Sort by (If you highlighted labels at the top of
  your rows, the labels should appear on your
  selection list. If they do not, check to see
  that the Header Row circle is marked).
• Click OK

14
Autofilters in Excel

• Highlight the data and labels (as with the sort
  function, highlight the entire block, not just
  the data of interest)
• Select Filter - Autofilter from the Data menu.
  Small downward arrows should appear at the top of
  each column.
• Click on one of the arrows. You should see a
  list of all the different elements that appear in
  that column. For example, if it is a gender
  column, you should see M and F. The list
  will also include blanks if blank fields exist
  in your data.
• Select a parameter from the list. Once you have
  done this, all fields not containing this
  parameter will be hidden and the arrow will
  appear blue, indicating that the field is
  filtered. You can unhide the cases by clicking
  on the blue arrow and selecting all.