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Education & Money / NCES Common Core of Data

American schools, by the dollar

America's public schools spent $796B educating 49.3M students in 2022-23 - about $16,164 each. But that average hides a 2-to-1 gap between states, funded very differently, and staffed at very different sizes.

$16,164 spent per student, per year
Total current spending
$796B 2022-23
Students per teacher
15.2 2024-25
State range
$10,146-$30,462
Full

Per-pupil figures are current spending - the day-to-day cost of running schools (instruction, support, operations), the standard comparison measure - not capital or debt. Finance is the latest district survey (2022-23); enrollment and staffing are the latest nonfiscal year (2024-25), so the two strands are dated separately.

Current spending per pupil · 2022-23

A 2-to-1 gap between states

District of Columbia spends $30,462 per student; Idaho spends $10,146 - roughly three times less. The Northeast clusters at the top, the Mountain West and Sun Belt at the bottom. The map shades current spending per pupil; the table keeps the exact figures.

Alabama: $12,772 per pupil Alaska: $20,340 per pupil Arizona: $11,246 per pupil Colorado: $14,664 per pupil Florida: $11,862 per pupil Georgia: $14,282 per pupil Indiana: $12,962 per pupil Kansas: $14,297 per pupil Maine: $18,487 per pupil Massachusetts: $22,955 per pupil Minnesota: $15,248 per pupil New Jersey: $25,480 per pupil North Carolina: $12,306 per pupil North Dakota: $15,539 per pupil Oklahoma: $10,981 per pupil Pennsylvania: $18,243 per pupil South Dakota: $12,005 per pupil Texas: $12,148 per pupil Wyoming: $19,324 per pupil Connecticut: $23,867 per pupil Missouri: $13,595 per pupil West Virginia: $14,523 per pupil Illinois: $19,786 per pupil New Mexico: $15,578 per pupil Arkansas: $12,339 per pupil California: $18,459 per pupil Delaware: $20,525 per pupil District of Columbia: $30,462 per pupil Hawaii: $20,056 per pupil Iowa: $13,080 per pupil Kentucky: $14,633 per pupil Maryland: $18,887 per pupil Michigan: $15,313 per pupil Mississippi: $12,129 per pupil Montana: $13,612 per pupil New Hampshire: $21,721 per pupil New York: $29,579 per pupil Ohio: $15,461 per pupil Oregon: $16,029 per pupil Tennessee: $12,198 per pupil Utah: $10,232 per pupil Virginia: $16,097 per pupil Washington: $17,899 per pupil Wisconsin: $14,850 per pupil Nebraska: $14,752 per pupil South Carolina: $14,349 per pupil Idaho: $10,146 per pupil Nevada: $11,222 per pupil Vermont: $22,147 per pupil Louisiana: $14,742 per pupil Rhode Island: $21,010 per pupil
Per pupil
  1. $10.1k-$12.8k
  2. $12.8k-$14.8k
  3. $14.8k-$18.9k
  4. $18.9k-$30.5k
State table - the ranked source of truth
Spends the mostPer pupilRatio
District of Columbia$30,46211.0:1
New York$29,57911.9:1
New Jersey$25,48012.0:1
Connecticut$23,86711.8:1
Massachusetts$22,95511.9:1
Vermont$22,14711.4:1
Spends the leastPer pupilRatio
Idaho$10,14617.7:1
Utah$10,23221.6:1
Oklahoma$10,98116.2:1
Nevada$11,22219.7:1
Arizona$11,24617.6:1
Florida$11,86218.3:1

Current spending per pupil (total current expenditure / fall membership), quartile classes · Darker = more per pupil · Real NCES F-33 2022-23 · 50 states + DC

School revenue by source · 2022-23

Who pays for it

Public schools are funded from three pockets. Nationally local and state money split the bill almost evenly, with a thin federal slice - but states rely on these pockets in wildly different proportions.

Federal
13%
State
44%
Local
43%
Leans hardest on local funding
  1. District of Columbia 88%
  2. New Hampshire 64%
  3. Nebraska 59%
  4. Missouri 58%
  5. Pennsylvania 57%
  6. Connecticut 56%
  7. Illinois 55%
  8. Texas 52%
Leans hardest on state funding
  1. Vermont 89%
  2. Hawaii 88%
  3. Nevada 68%
  4. Washington 65%
  5. New Mexico 64%
  6. Idaho 63%
  7. Minnesota 61%
  8. Kansas 61%
Federal State Local Share of total school revenue · bars are 100%
Students per teacher · 2024-25

How crowded the classroom

Nationally there are 15.2 students for every teacher, but the spread runs from about 21.7 in California down to 11.0 in District of Columbia. The dashed line is the national average.

  1. California 21.7:1
  2. Utah 21.6:1
  3. Nevada 19.7:1
  4. Alaska 18.9:1
  5. Florida 18.3:1
  6. Washington 17.8:1
  7. Oregon 17.8:1
  8. Idaho 17.7:1
  9. Arizona 17.6:1
  10. Alabama 17.4:1
  11. Wyoming 12.2:1
  12. New Jersey 12.0:1
  13. New York 11.9:1
  14. Massachusetts 11.9:1
  15. Connecticut 11.8:1
  16. North Dakota 11.5:1
  17. Vermont 11.4:1
  18. New Hampshire 11.3:1
  19. Maine 11.1:1
  20. District of Columbia 11.0:1

Students per teacher (fall enrollment / teacher FTE) · top 10 largest, bottom 10 smallest

Largest districts by enrollment · 2022-23

The biggest systems

A handful of districts educate enormous shares of the country's students. NYC Chancellor's Office alone enrolls 847,030. Their per-pupil spending varies as much as the states they sit in - shown at right against the national $16,164.

  1. 1 NYC Chancellor's OfficeNY 847,030 $33,387
  2. 2 Los Angeles UnifiedCA 427,795 $22,606
  3. 3 Miami-DadeFL 334,090 $13,138
  4. 4 City of Chicago SD 299IL 321,666 $22,699
  5. 5 Clark County School DistrictNV 309,787 $11,569
  6. 6 BrowardFL 254,732 $12,121
  7. 7 HillsboroughFL 224,538 $10,589
  8. 8 OrangeFL 207,561 $11,706
  9. 9 Houston ISDTX 189,934 $13,072
  10. 10 Palm BeachFL 188,843 $14,024
  11. 11 Gwinnett CountyGA 181,814 $14,348
  12. 12 Fairfax County Public SchoolsVA 179,858 $18,975

Fall membership per district, NCES F-33 2022-23 · Green per-pupil figures are above the national average, muted are below · Some entries (e.g. NYC, Chicago) are single citywide districts

Notes on the data

Methodology

Every figure here is a direct aggregation of the NCES Common Core of Data, the U.S. Department of Education's universe survey of public K-12 school districts, published at nces.ed.gov/ccd. Money comes from the F-33 School District Finance Survey (2022-23); enrollment and staffing from the nonfiscal collection (2024-25). This dashboard is badged Full - real bulk data, nothing curated.

"Per pupil" means current spending

Per-pupil figures are current spending divided by fall membership - the ongoing cost of running schools (instruction, student and staff support, operations, administration). It excludes capital projects, debt service and some other funds, which is the standard way per-pupil spending is compared. Nationally that is $16,164; instruction is 59% of it and support services 37%.

Two strands, two years

District-level finance runs about two years behind the enrollment counts - the latest F-33 district file is 2022-23, while membership and staff are collected through 2024-25. We use each at its latest available year and label both, rather than hold the whole dashboard back to the older one. The national student-teacher ratio (15.2 to 1) joins the 2024-25 teacher counts to the 2024-25 enrollment on the district ID; a state is left off the ratio if its files did not match.

Missing-value codes, and outliers

F-33 flags missing, not-applicable, suppressed and low-quality values with negative codes (-1, -2, -3, -9). We treat any negative as absent and never sum it, so a suppressed cell can never masquerade as a real dollar figure. The district leaderboard is ranked by enrollment, not by per-pupil spending: a per-pupil ranking is dominated by county offices of education and special agencies that serve tiny, high-need populations at very high cost, which would mislead. Those agencies still sit inside the state totals, where they wash out.

How the cuts are built

State per-pupil is the sum of every district's current spending divided by the sum of its membership - a true weighted figure, not an average of district rates. Revenue shares divide each state's federal, state and local revenue by its total. Only the 50 states and DC are shown; a small number of districts with no usable spending or enrollment are dropped from their state's totals.

Generated 2026-07-11 23:42 UTC

Source: NCES Common Core of Data - F-33 district finance (2022-23) + nonfiscal membership/staff (2024-25), nces.ed.gov/ccd

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