Education - Return on Investment

According to a study done by Dr. Susan Aud, Senior Fellow at the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation there is widespread ignorance and confusion about the actual amount Florida spends on its public schools.

In 2003-04, Florida’s “current expenditures” on education, which consist mostly of day-to-day expenses, amounted to $17.6 billion or $6,931 per student. Current expenditures per student in the five largest districts, which include half of all Florida students, were:

Broward County: $6,976
Hillsborough County: $7,156
Miami-Dade County: $7,309
Orange County: $6,914
Palm Beach County: $7,424

The study reports that Florida’s “current expenditures” per student rose by nearly 9 percent from 1996 to 2002, adjusting for inflation. This represents an increase of $462 per student after inflation. Expenditures began to grow slightly faster after 1999.

State data suggest that the growth in Florida’s current expenditures continued at least through 2003-04,making it likely that current spending are significantly greater than $7,000 in 2005-06.

Also according to the study when the capital costs and debt service necessary to run the school system are included, Florida spent a total of more than $22 billion on education, or $8,735 per student, in 2003-04.

At the end of 2003-04 the state had a nearly $8 billion ending balance. This represents money raised but not spent. About 10 percent of tax revenue for Florida schools comes from the federal government, 45 percent from the state and 45 percent from local sources. A small amount also comes from non-tax sources.

About two-thirds of all funding ($12 billion) were distributed through the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), the state’s foundation formula, in 2003-04. The required local effort mandated by the legislature accounted for $5.2 billion, and $86 million were spent on two voucher programs, leaving $6.7 billion of the FEFP to be funded by the state.

Florida Department of Education has created a website that displays many indicators of school, district, and state performance. The sources for these measures are the comprehensive student, staff, and finance data systems maintained by the Florida Department of Education.

This Return on Investment site allows users to evaluate measures of performance in light of the resources allocated to the individual schools and districts. The creation of a Return on Investment index for each Florida public school has been developed to relate financial resources expended at the school-level with measures of student performance at that school.

Click here to visit the website