IES Blog

NCES recently released a finance tables report, Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education: FY 21 (NCES 2023-301), which draws from data in the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS). To accompany the report, NCES has updated the interactive data visualization tool to highlight the per pupil revenues and expenditures (adjusted for inflation) and average daily attendance (ADA) trends from the fiscal year 2021 (FY 21) NPEFS.

This tool allows users to see national or state-specific per pupil amounts and year-to-year percentage changes for both total revenue and current expenditures by using a slider to toggle between the two variables. Total revenues are shown by source, and total current expenditures are shown by function and subfunction. Clicking on a state in the map will display data for the selected state in the bar charts.

The tool also allows users to see the ADA for each state. It is sortable by state, ADA amount, and percentage change. It may also be filtered to easily compare selected states. Hovering over the ADA of a state will display another bar graph with the last 3 years of ADA data.

Overall, the results show that spending¹ on elementary and secondary education increased in school year 2020–21 (FY 21). This is the eighth consecutive year that year-over-year education spending increased (since FY 13), after adjusting for inflation. This increase follows declines in year-over-year spending for the prior 4 years (FY 10 through FY 13).

Revenues

The 50 states and the District of Columbia reported $837.3 billion in revenues collected for public elementary and secondary education in FY 21. State and local governments provided $748.9 billion, or 89.4 percent of all revenues. The federal government contributed $88.4 billion, or 10.6 percent of all revenues. Total revenues increased by 3.0 percent after adjusting for inflation² (from $812.8 to $837.3 billion) from FY 20 to FY 21; local revenues remained relatively unchanged (from $365.1 to $365.1 billion); state revenues decreased by 0.6 percent (from $385.9 to $383.8 billion); and federal revenues increased by 43.2 percent (from $61.8 to $88.4 billion).

Total revenues per pupil averaged $17,015 on a national basis in FY 21. This reflects an increase of 5.9 percent between FY 20 and FY 21 and follows an increase of 1.5 percent from FY 19 to FY 20. The percentage change in revenues per pupil from FY 20 to FY 21 ranged from an increase of 15.3 percent in Maine to a decrease of 4.2 percent in Hawaii.

As the primary statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is mandated to report complete statistics on the condition of American education. While the condition of an education system is often assessed through indicators of achievement and attainment, NCES is also mandated to report on the conditions of the education workplace.

As such, NCES has reported timely information from schools. For example, this past December, NCES released data that indicated that public schools have experienced difficulty filling positions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.¹ In order to understand the broader labor situation, NCES is utilizing the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey to describe the tightness of the job market.

JOLTS Design

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), provides monthly estimates of job openings, hires, and total separations. The purpose of JOLTS data is to serve as demand-side indicators of labor shortages at the national level.²

The JOLTS program reports labor demand and turnover estimates by industry, including education.³ As such, this analysis focuses on the public state and local education industry (“state and local government education” as referred to by JOLTS),⁴ which includes all persons employed by public elementary and secondary school systems and postsecondary institutions.

The JOLTS program does not produce estimates by Standard Occupational Classification.⁵ When reviewing these findings, please note occupations⁶ within the public state and local education industry vary⁷ (e.g., teachers and instructional aides, administrators, cafeteria workers, transportation workers). Furthermore, as the JOLTS data are tabulated at the industry level, the estimates are inclusive of the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education levels.

Analysis

In this blog post, we present selected estimates on the number and rate of job openings, hires, and total separations (quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations). The job openings rate is computed by dividing the number of job openings by the sum of employment and job openings. All other metric rates (hires, total separations, quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations) are defined by taking the number of each metric and dividing it by employment. Fill rate is defined as the ratio of the number of hires to the number of job openings, and the churn rate is defined as the sum of the rate of hires and the rate of total separations.⁸

Table 1. Number of job openings, hires, and separations and net change in employment in public state and local education, in thousands: January 2020 through January 2023

*Significantly different from January 2023 (p < .05).
¹ Net employment changes are calculated by taking the difference between the number of hires and the number of separations. When the number of hires exceeds the number of separations, employment rises—even if the number of hires is steady or declining. Conversely, when the number of hires is less than the number of separations, employment declines—even if the number of hires is steady or rising.
NOTE: Data are not seasonally adjusted. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), 2020–2023, based on data downloaded April 5, 2023, from https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv?jt.

[2] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltover.htm.

[3] For more information about these estimates, see https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.tn.htm.

[4] JOLTS refers to this industry as state and local government education, which is designated as ID 92.

[5] For more information on the reliability of JOLTS estimates, see https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltreliability.htm.

[6] North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is a system for classifying establishments (individual business locations) by type of economic activity. The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) classifies all occupations for which work is performed for pay or profit. To learn more on the differences between NAICS and SOC, see https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/industry-occupation/about/faq.html.

[7] JOLTS data are establishment based, and there is no distinction between occupations within an industry. If a teacher and a school nurse were hired by an establishment coded as state and local government education, both would fall under that industry. (From email communication with JOLTS staff, April 7, 2023.)

[8] Skopovi, S., Calhoun, P., and Akinyooye, L. Job Openings and Labor Turnover Trends for States in 2020. Beyond the Numbers: Employment & Unemployment, 10(14). Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-10/jolts-2020-state-estimates.htm.

June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and NCES is proud to share some of the work we have undertaken to collect data on the characteristics and well-being of sexual and gender minority populations.

Inclusion of questions about sexual orientation and gender identity on federal surveys allows for better understanding of sexual and gender minority populations relative to the general population. These sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data meet a critical need for information to understand trends within larger population groups, and insights gained from analysis of the data can lead to potential resources and needed interventions being provided to better serve the community. Giving respondents the opportunity to describe themselves and bring their “whole self” to a questionnaire helps them to be seen and heard by researchers and policymakers.

Sometimes, NCES is asked why questions like this appear on an education survey. They can be sensitive questions for some people, after all. NCES asks these questions to be able to understand the different experiences, equity, and outcomes related to education for sexual and gender minorities, just as NCES does for groups identified by other demographic characteristics like race, ethnicity, household income, and what part of the country someone lives in. By sexual minorities, we mean people who report their sexual orientation to be something other than straight or heterosexual, and by gender minorities, we mean people whose sex as recorded at birth is different from their gender.

Over the past 10 years, NCES has researched how to best ask respondents about their sexual orientation and gender identity, how respondents react to these questions, and the quality of data that NCES has collected on these characteristics.

At NCES, several studies include background questions for adults about their sexual orientation and gender identity. These are the High School Longitudinal Study: 2009 (HSLS:09) Second Follow-up in 2016, the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B) 08/18 and 16/21 collections, the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) in 2020, and the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS) 2020/22 (see table below for more details about these surveys).

The collection of these data allows NCES to describe the experiences of gender and sexual minority individuals. For example:

• In 2020, postsecondary students who identified as genderqueer, gender nonconforming, or a different identity had difficulty finding safe and stable housing at three times the rate (9 percent) of students who identified as male or female (3 percent each).¹
   
• In 2018, about 10 years after completing a 2007–08 bachelor’s degree, graduates who were gender minorities² described their financial situations. Graduates who were gender minorities were less likely to own a home (31 percent) or hold a retirement account (74 percent) than graduates who were not gender minorities (63 percent and 87 percent, respectively) (figure 1).³  

Financial literacy is a critical skill for young adults—especially as they begin to enter college or the workforce—that is often needed for partial or full financial independence and increased financial decision making.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)—which is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—gives us a unique opportunity to analyze and understand the financial literacy of 15-year-olds in the United States and other education systems around the world. PISA is the only large-scale nationally representative assessment that measures the financial literacy skills of 15-year-olds. The financial literacy domain was administered first in 2012 and then in 2015 and 2018. The 2018 financial literacy cycle assessed approximately 117,000 students, representing about 13.5 million 15-year-olds from 20 education systems. The fourth cycle began in fall 2022 in the United States and is currently being conducted.

How Frequently Do Students Discuss Financial Topics With Their Parents?

In 2018, all education systems that administered the PISA financial literacy assessment also asked students to complete a questionnaire about their experiences with money matters in school and outside of school. In the United States, about 3,500 students out of the total 3,740 U.S. PISA sample completed the questionnaire.

This blog post explores how frequently students reported talking about the following five topics with their parents (or guardians or relatives):

1. their spending decisions
2. their savings decisions
3. the family budget
4. money for things they want to buy
5. news related to economics or finance

Students’ answers were grouped into two categories: frequent (“a few times a month” or “once a week or more”) and infrequent (“never or almost never” or “a few times a year”).

We first looked at the degree to which students frequently discussed various financial topics with their parents. In 2018, the frequency of student-parent financial discussions varied by financial topic (figure 1):

• About one-quarter (24 percent) of U.S. 15-year-old students reported frequently discussing with their parents news related to economics or finance.
• More than half (53 percent) of U.S. 15-year-old students reported frequently discussing with their parents money for things they wanted to buy.

Do male and female students differ in how frequently they discuss financial topics with their parents?

In 2018, higher percentages of female students than of male students frequently discussed with their parents the family budget (35 vs. 32 percent) and money for things they wanted to buy (56 vs. 50 percent). Meanwhile, a lower percentage of female students than of male students frequently discussed with their parents news related to economics or finance (21 vs. 26 percent) (figure 2).

Are Students’ Financial Literacy Scores Related to How Frequently They Discuss Financial Matters With Their Parents?

With a scale from 0–1,000, the PISA financial literacy assessment measures students’ financial knowledge in four content areas:

1. money and transactions
2. planning and managing finances
3. risk and reward
4. the financial landscape

In 2018, the average score of 15-year-old students ranged from 388 points in Indonesia to 547 points in Estonia. The U.S. average (506 points) was higher than the average in 11 education systems, lower than the average in 4 education systems, and not measurably different from the average in 4 education systems. The U.S. average was also not measurably different from the OECD average.

We also examined the relationship between frequent parent–student financial discussions and students’ financial literacy achievement (figure 3). After taking into account students’ gender, race/ethnicity, immigration status, and socioeconomic status—as well as their school’s poverty and location—the results show that students who reported frequently discussing spending decisions with their parents scored 16 points higher on average than did students who reported infrequently discussing this topic. On the other hand, students who reported frequently discussing news related to economics or finance with their parents scored 18 points lower on average than did students who reported infrequently discussing this topic.  

Do Students Think That Young Adults Should Make Their Own Spending Decisions?

We also explored whether students agreed that young people should make their own spending decisions. In 2018, some 63 percent of U.S. 15-year-old students reported they agreed or strongly agreed, while 37 percent reported that they disagreed.

Do male and female students differ in their agreement that young adults should make their own spending decisions?

When comparing the percentage of male versus female students, we found that a lower percentage of female students than of male students agreed or strongly agreed that young people should make their own spending decisions (59 vs. 66 percent). This pattern held even after taking into account students’ gender, race/ethnicity, immigration status, and socioeconomic status as well as school poverty and location.  

Upcoming PISA Data Collections

A deeper understanding of the frequency of parent–student financial conversations, the types of topics discussed, and the relationships between financial topics and financial literacy could help parents and educators foster financial literacy across different student groups in the United States.

PISA began collecting data in 2022 after being postponed 1 year due to the COVID-19 pandemic; 83 education systems are expected to participate. The PISA 2022 Financial Literacy Assessment will include items from earlier years as well as new interactive items. The main PISA results will be released in December 2023, and the PISA financial literacy results will be released in spring/summer 2024.

Be sure to follow NCES on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube and subscribe to the NCES News Flash to receive notifications when these new PISA data are released.

By Saki Ikoma, Marissa Hall, and Frank Fonseca, AIR

In April, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) will kick off the 2023 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) of eighth-grade students in the United States. This will be the second time the United States is participating in the ICILS.

What is ICILS?

ICILS is a computer-based international assessment of eighth-grade students’ capacity to use information and communications technologies (ICT)¹ productively for a range of different purposes. It is sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and conducted in the United States by NCES.

In addition to assessing students on two components—computer and information literacy (CIL) and computational thinking (CT)—ICILS also collects information from students, teachers, school principals, and ICT coordinators on contextual factors that may be related to students’ development in CIL.

Why is ICILS important?

ICILS measures students’ skills with ICT and provides data on CIL. In the United States, the development of these skills is called for in the Federal STEM Education Strategic Plan. Outside of the United States, ICILS is also recognized as an official EU target by the European Council and EU member states to support strategic priorities toward the European Education Area and Beyond (2021–2030). From a global perspective, ICILS provides information for monitoring progress toward the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The measurement of students’ CIL is highly relevant today—digital tools and online learning became the primary means of delivering and receiving education during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and technology continually shapes the way students learn both inside and outside of school.

ICILS provides valuable comparative data on students’ skills and experience across all participating education systems. In 2018, ICILS results showed that U.S. eighth-grade students’ average CIL score (519) was higher than the ICILS 2018 average score (496) (figure 1).