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Moving Toward Comparability: Assessing Per-Student Costs In K-12, Robert J. Eger Iii, Bruce D. Mcdonald Iii

Bruce D. McDonald, III

The current classifications for public school costs are provided by the National Center for Educational Statistics. To improve comparability between school districts, this paper provides an alternative classification with fewer numbers of expenditure categories and sub-categories. We also introduce distinctions between school-based and non-school based administration costs and between elementary and secondary schools to provide an identification of possible sources of inefficiency. The new classification is then applied to five comparable urban school districts Atlanta, Boston, Mobile, Nashville, and Newark. We find (1) that teacher salaries per student are affected by school level disaggregation; (2) that separating administrative costs into …