Collection of Public School Expenditure Data: Development of a Questionnaire. Working Paper Series.

Data are not available to inform education policy discussion regarding how resources are allocated both within and among schools. This study was conducted to develop and pilot test a questionnaire that would collect school-level expenditure data. This report describes the three site visits and focus group conducted for this project, findings from pilot tests of two versions of questionnaires (one in seven districts and one in eight school districts), and the revised instrument, the "Public School Expenditure Survey." Both pilot instruments were developed as mailed questionnaires linked to the Schools and Staffing Survey. Collecting data by the functional categories defined by the National Center for Education Statistics was the challenge that was most clearly met by the developed instrument. The instrument also shows that it is possible to collect school-level data, but the drawback is that the instrument must be fairly complex and thus creates a burden for the respondent. One appendix contains the instrument, and the other explains common errors that cause data inconsistency. (SLD)