2024 FESR
Financial Efficiency Star Rating
The Financial Efficiency Star Rating (FESR) provides a comparison of district spending per student with overall academic performance. The FESR should be one measure that a user evaluates in conjunction with all other information provided for each school and district. The goal of the star rating is to provide a comparison of district spending per student with overall academic performance. The Financial Efficiency Star Rating Archives provide information on FESRs from previous years. The Georgia Department of Education's District Financial Information Dashboard provides a high-level overview of district- and school-level finances.
2024 FESR
The Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) and GOSA were unable to release FESR for the 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school years due to incomplete CCRPI data. For those years, GOSA only calculated and released the per pupil expenditure (PPE) at the district-level and school-level. For the 2023-2024 school year, GaDOE and GOSA were able to calculate both PPE (school, district, and state-level) and FESR (school and district-level). The following files are available for download:
Details on the FESR Calculation
The matrix below shows the method for determining the FESR using both the PPE percentile and the CCRPI scores. Districts can earn between a one-half star and five stars, with a one-half star rating for districts with the highest PPEs and low CCRPI scores, and a five-star rating for districts with the lowest PPEs and high CCRPI scores. The 2024 district FESR is based on a three-year average (2018-2019, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024) of PPE and CCRPI scores. The 2024 school FESR is based on a three-year average (2018-2019, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024) of PPE and CCRPI scores.
The PPE is calculated by dividing the district's expenditures by the district's fall enrollment count. The PPE calculation only includes certain expenditures. In general, expenditures that do not directly affect the K-12 population, those associated with food and facility construction, and expenditures that cannot be associated with a specific year are omitted from the PPE calculation. Additionally, expenditures for students that are outside of the district’s enrollment zone are excluded from the calculation. The
2024
Calculation Guide
provides a complete list of excluded expenditures.
State charter schools are reported in the school-level downloadable file. Since state charter schools report directly to the state, any district value (such as district allocation) is reported as zero. Otherwise, their school-level and district-level version of a particular variable would be the same.
Authorizing Statute
O.C.G.A. §20-14-33 requires that the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA), in coordination with GaDOE, create a financial efficiency rating. The law requires that GOSA and the GaDOE collaborate to “adopt and annually review, and revise as necessary, indicators of the quality of learning by students, financial efficiency, and school climate for individual schools and for school systems.” Financial efficiency “may include an analysis of how federal and state funds spent by local school systems impact student achievement and school improvement, and components used to determine financial efficiency may include actual achievement, resource efficiency, and student participation in standardized testing.” The rating must be based upon five stars.