This presentation features a data analysis on public school revenue sources and its accompanying effect on test scores. The analysis uses fourth grade math and reading scores for each state in the United States.

1. The Effect of Public School
Revenue Sources on Test Scores
Group 1:
Katie Carcaci, Megan Foster, Nick Sarver,
Harry Scuron, Taylor Trench

2. Scenario
- The issue at hand: average test scores for public schools vary across states
- Central question: How do different sources of revenue affect average test
scores of public schools in the United States?
- Why is this important?
- Education is often used as an indicator for the health of a country
- Government agencies are interested in ways to improve overall quality of education
- Federal, state, and local revenue sources could use this information to determine the
amount of revenue they want to dedicate to public schools

3. Data
- “U.S. Education Datasets: Unification Project” from Kaggle
- Combines financial and education data from the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP), the U.S. Census Bureau, and the National Center
for Education Statistics (NCES) for public schools
- Key elements for analysis:
- 2015 data
- State name
- Total revenue
- Federal revenue, state revenue, local revenue
- Reading and math scores (fourth grade marker)

4. Analysis and Results - Federal Revenue
- % of total revenue that comes
from federal sources was plotted
against average combined
testing scores (math and reading
in fourth grade) per state
- Slope of trendline = -1.07
- Model predicts that for each 1%
increase of the amount of total
revenue that comes from federal
sources, average combined
scores will decrease by 1.07

5. Analysis and Results - Local Revenue
- % of total revenue that comes
from local sources was plotted
against average combined
testing scores (math and reading
in fourth grade) per state
- Slope of trendline = 0.15
- Model predicts that for each 1%
increase of the amount of total
revenue that comes from local
sources, average combined
scores will increase by 0.15

6. Conclusions
- As the percentage of total revenue that comes from federal sources increases,
test scores decrease
- Evidence: negative slope of trendline (-1.07) pulled from scatterplot of test scores vs. % of
federal revenue
- As the percentage of total revenue that comes from local sources increases,
test scores also increase
- Evidence: positive slope of trendline (0.15) pulled from scatterplot of test scores vs. % of local
revenue
- What next?
- Public schools could focus more on generating revenue from local sources and less on
generating revenue from federal sources!

7. References
- “Data & Statistics.” ED.gov, https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/landing.jhtml?src=ft.
- Garrard, Roy. “U.S. Education Datasets: Unification Project.” Kaggle, 2 Mar. 2019,
https://www.kaggle.com/noriuk/us-education-datasets-unification-project.
- “NAEP and State Assessments.” NAEP State,
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/state/state_differences.aspx.