The Comparable Wage Index (CWI) is an index that was initially created by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to facilitate comparison of educational expenditures across locales (principally school districts, or local educational agencies—LEAs) or states (state educational agencies— SEAs). The CWI is a measure of the systematic, regional variations in the wages and salaries of college graduates who are not PK-12 educators as determined by reported occupational category. It can be used by researchers to adjust district-level finance data at different levels in order to make better comparisons across geographic areas. This documentation describes the creation of a CWI for teachers based primarily on the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS, an ongoing survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, has replaced the decennial census as the primary source of detailed demographic information about the U.S. population. It provides information about the earnings, age, occupation, industry, and other demographic characteristics for millions of U.S. workers. The ACS-CWIFT measures wage and salary differences for college graduates, using an analysis that is modeled after the baseline analysis used to construct the original CWI released by NCES in 2006.
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