How scoring works
MethodologyHow school district transparency grades are scored
Every grade on this site is reproducible from the rubric below. A district can read this page, check its own website, and arrive at the same number we did. If it cannot, that is a defect and we want to hear about it.
What the grade measures
The score measures disclosure: how much of a district's financial record is published where a member of the public can find it. It does not measure whether the spending was wise, whether the schools perform well, or whether staff acted properly. A district can spend heavily and score an A, or spend modestly and score an F. The question is only whether the public can see the books.
The rubric
Thirteen records are worth 100 points in total. Two practices carry deductions. A score cannot fall below zero.
| Record | Points | What earns the points |
|---|---|---|
| Public check register | 14 | Every disbursement published with payee category, date, amount, and fund, updated at least quarterly. |
| Annual financial audit | 6 | A current Annual Comprehensive Financial Report with the independent auditor opinion attached. |
| Performance or efficiency audit | 5 | An independent review of whether spending achieved its stated purpose, published within the last three years. |
| Line-item adopted budget | 11 | The adopted budget broken out by function and object code, not a summary presentation. |
| Purchasing card transactions | 9 | Purchasing and credit card transaction detail with merchant category, date, and amount. |
| Payment history by category | 9 | Cumulative payments grouped by spending category, covering at least one full fiscal year. |
| Machine-readable data | 9 | Financial data offered as CSV, XLSX, JSON, or an open API rather than scanned images. |
| Compensation schedule | 7 | Current salary schedules and aggregate administrator compensation bands, including stipends. |
| Bond and capital disclosure | 7 | Bond program spending reported against the specific projects voters approved, with remaining balances. |
| Board minutes and agendas | 7 | Minutes and agenda packets posted together with the financial exhibits that were voted on. |
| Contracts posted | 6 | Executed contracts and amendments above the district bid threshold, posted in full. |
| Direct download, no request | 6 | Core financial records download directly, with no records request, login, or fee. |
| Published records process | 4 | A public records page naming the responsible officer, the statutory timeline, and any fees. |
| Total | 100 |
Deductions
| Practice | Points | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Basic spending data released only by records request | -10 | Routine financial records require a formal state public-records request (CORA, FOIA, or PRA depending on the state). |
| Fees charged for routine financial records | -5 | A fee is applied to obtain routine budget or expenditure records. |
Publishing a record and releasing it on request are different levels of disclosure. A district that posts its check register has answered the question in advance. A district that requires a formal public-records request has answered it only for whoever filed, and only after a delay. The rubric treats those differently.
Grade bands
- A — 90 to 100 points
- B — 80 to 89
- C — 70 to 79
- D — 60 to 69
- F — below 60
Why every district starts at C
A district we have not reviewed carries a provisional C and a clear under review label. It is never shown an F on the strength of our not having looked yet. Absence of evidence is not evidence of concealment, and the starting grade reflects that. The provisional score is excluded from state averages and never appears as a rating in structured data.
Where the numbers come from
Enrollment and financial aggregates come from the federal NCES F-33 school district finance survey and the NCES Common Core of Data directory. Document findings come from each district's own public website. We link to records rather than rehosting them, so you always land on the district's own copy.
Figures are published only once matched to a reported federal filing. Until then a district page shows its disclosure score and withholds the dollar amounts.
Adjusting for inflation
Every dollar figure on this site is nominal, meaning it is the amount as filed with the federal survey in the year it was filed. Comparisons across years also show a real figure, which removes the effect of rising prices so that growth in resources can be told apart from growth in costs.
The deflator is CPI-U, U.S. city average, all items, annual average (BLS), applied as published annual index values rather than as a straight line between the first and last year. That distinction matters over this particular decade: prices rose roughly 9.2% in the five years to FY2020 and then a further 21.2% in the four years after it. A straight line between the endpoints would land near the right answer in FY2015 and FY2024 and overstate inflation by more than eight points in the middle, which is where a reader actually uses it.
Real change is calculated as the ratio of the two growth factors, not by subtracting the inflation rate from the nominal rate. Subtraction is an approximation that drifts by several points across a decade. One imprecision remains and is worth stating: the federal fiscal year ends on 30 June, so a calendar-year price index is offset from the survey year by about six months.
What we do not publish
No individual employee names, no student data, and no individual vendor or contractor names. Where a source ledger contains them, the data is aggregated into standard budget categories before anything is shown. Staffing appears only in aggregate, such as total payroll or average salary.
Correcting a score
Districts can submit missing records, corrected figures, or a challenge to how a rubric item was applied, at any time and at no cost. Submissions are reviewed and scores are updated when the records support it. A district that publishes more moves up; that is the entire point of grading disclosure rather than spending.