Tracking K-12 Education Spending in California

What is the cost of educating a child? Where is that money spent? Do most of the dollars go to the classroom or is an inordinate amount "wasted" on administration—as some critics claim? This study used data from California to begin addressing these key questions of the education reform debate. The authors detail the educational expenditures made by the California Department of Education, the county offices of education, the district offices of education, and the schools themselves in support of K–12 education in California for the 1992–93 school year. A major finding is that, on average across the state, 62 percent of school district general-fund spending goes to the classroom. In contrast, district operations account for 8 percent of school district general-fund spending, which amounts to 6 percent of K–12 spending. Besides the average expenditure patterns of all school districts in California, the study also looked at differences in these expenditure patterns for different types of school districts for special-needs populations.