State questionnaire (51 KB)

The state questionnaire focuses on two basic types of data. The first component requests lists of personnel and non-personnel resources allocated to the special education division within the state department of education. We ask for payroll information about all special education division employees. We anticipate that the job titles will help us ascertain the activities for which each individual is primarily responsible. The personnel and non-personnel data will be collected by function and object of expenditure. We will request definitions of the accounting codes to help us interpret the various program, job, function, and object codes provided within the payroll and budgeting systems. Our goal for these data is to determine how the state departments of education use the funding to support various special education activities at the state and local level.

The second component of the state data collection requests information about special education funding to districts and other local educational agencies within the state. We expect to obtain allocations of federal IDEA funds and state special education funds to each LEA, including regular school districts and any intermediate units funded directly by the state or federal government.

These data will be used to explore the ways in which these funds are targeted to certain kinds of school districts (e.g., high- versus low-poverty, large versus small, and urban versus rural). These data will also help us to determine the relationship between regular LEAs and intermediate units. Finally, these data will help us ascertain how much of the federal funding is retained at the state versus local level.

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