School Results vs. Spending

What Stonington’s students get for what the town spends on schools, once family circumstances are taken into account — growth, scores and spending per need-weighted pupil against fifteen statistical peers.

  • AUDITED FY 2013-14 → FY 2022-23
  • PULLED 2026-08-10
Enrollment 1,847 Average daily membership, FY 2022-23. CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf).
Education spending $44.9M Audited actual, FY 2022-23. A town in a regional district reports only the grades it runs. CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf).
Education spending per pupil $24,289RANK 112 / 169 8% above the statewide median of $22,590 Audited actual ÷ average daily membership, FY 2022-23. CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf). OPM education expenditures divided by average daily membership. This is not the state Department of Education's Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil, which is calculated on a narrower basis and will differ.
Before you read these charts.
  • Academic growth (percentage of target achieved) — Growth measures how far a student moved in a year toward a target set from their own prior score; the achievement index measures where students ended up. Growth depends less on family circumstances than the level does — less, not not at all — so this site shows it first.
  • Peer groups — A peer group is a tool for a specific question, not a verdict. A group that is right for comparing school spending can be wrong for comparing snow plowing. Where two defensible groups disagree, this site shows both.
  • Per-pupil spending — There is more than one per-pupil number, and they are not interchangeable. What this site derives from OPM spending and average daily membership is not the state Department of Education's Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil.
  • Spending per need-weighted pupil — The state's own school-aid formula counts a student who is poor or still learning English as more than one student. Dividing spending by that weighted count, using the weights the General Assembly wrote into law, compares districts that serve different students on a common footing.
  • Medians, and why the town is left out of its own — A group is summarized by its median — the middle town, not the average. The subject town is excluded from its own group median, because a town cannot be part of the benchmark it is measured against.
  • Census survey estimates — American Community Survey figures are rolling five-year averages with a margin of error, not counts of a single year. Consecutive releases overlap and should not be read as year-over-year change.

9 terms bear on this page; the 6 most used are above. Full definitions, what each measure does not support, and the source behind it: How these numbers work.

01 What do this town’s students get for what it spends on schools?

What do this town’s students get for what the town spends on schools, once family circumstances are taken into account? This page puts two state measures side by side — how much students grew in a year, and how they scored — against spending per pupil after the state’s own need weights are applied, and compares the district with the fifteen Connecticut districts whose students are most like its own. It shows positions, not verdicts: no line on this page says whether a dollar was well spent.

This town’s public-school students are taught by …:

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Source: CSDE EdSight Academic Growth (GrowthModelExport, average percentage of target achieved, grades 4–8) and Performance Index (PerformanceIndexExport), three-year means; EdSight EFS per-pupil expenditures (EFSDistrictLevelbyFunctionExport) per need-weighted pupil under CGS §10-262f(25); CSDE Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil (basiccon / nceadm workbooks) for the town figure; town-to-district map from EdSight’s designated-high-school workbook. Built by Data/build_school_peer_model.py into school_performance_model.json. The district figure and the town figure are on different bases and are never combined.

02 How does growth in reading line up with spending?

Growth in reading against spending, among statistical peers

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Source: CSDE EdSight GrowthModelExport (Average Percentage of Target Achieved, ELA, all students, All Grades Combined), mean of the latest three reported school years; EdSight EFS total expenditures ÷ total need students, where total need students = resident students + 30% of FRPM-eligible + 15% of FRPM-eligible above 60% of enrollment + 25% of multilingual learners (CGS §10-262f(25)), five-year mean. Peers are the fifteen districts of the same grade-span type nearest on six demographic variables and enrollment (Ohio Department of Education similar-districts method), chosen by formula in Data/build_school_peer_model.py. Growth is a percentage of target, not a score: 100 would mean every student reached an ambitious one-year target. No line is fitted because fifteen points cannot support one.

03 And in mathematics?

Growth in math against spending, among statistical peers

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Source: as above, Math. CSDE EdSight GrowthModelExport, three-year mean; EFS spending per need-weighted pupil, five-year mean.

04 How do results compare with what demographics predict?

Reading results against what demographics predict, all districts

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Source: CSDE EdSight PerformanceIndexExport (ELA Performance Index, all students, 0–100), mean of the latest three reported school years. Prediction = ordinary least squares of that index on: share of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals, share of English learners, share of students with disabilities (EdSight October 1 enrollment), and log median household income, share of adults with a bachelor’s degree, share of children living with one parent (ACS 5-year, the district’s own Census geography where one exists, else its town). One observation per district, unweighted; coefficients and R² are in school_performance_model.json. The residual is relative (the residuals average to zero across districts, so a large share sit below the line) and correlational. Districts with fewer than 20 tested students are not shown; fewer than 500 are marked for sample size.

05 How much is spent per pupil — and does the definition change the answer?

Spending per pupil, under each definition

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Source: CSDE EdSight EFS EFSDistrictLevelbyFunctionExport total expenditures (district self-reported, unaudited; excludes debt service, capital and food service), five-year mean ending in the latest reported year. Per pupil = EFS pupils. Per need-weighted pupil = CGS §10-262f(25) weights applied to October 1 FRPM and multilingual-learner counts. Special-education tuition removed = the EFS Special Education Tuition line subtracted first. Wage-adjusted = divided by the NCES Comparable Wage Index for Teachers for the district. Constant dollars = CPI-U to the latest year. Peer medians exclude the district itself. The town’s own Net Current Expenditure per pupil is a different basis (CGS §10-261) and is shown in the overview, not here.

06 Which districts is this one being compared with?

The peer set

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Source: peer distance = Euclidean distance on z-scored FRPM, EL and SWD shares, log median household income, share of adults with a bachelor’s degree, share of children with one parent, and log enrollment, computed across every modeled district by Data/build_school_peer_model.py. Demographic shares: EdSight October 1 enrollment; income, attainment and family structure: ACS 5-year (with margins of error in the model file). Growth: GrowthModelExport. Index: PerformanceIndexExport. Spending: EFS per need-weighted pupil, five-year mean. A starred (suppressed) enrollment count is recovered as Total minus its complement where the complement is published, otherwise as 3 (the midpoint of the 1–5 range a star can mean); the model file records each case.

07 Where do this town’s own students go to school?

Where this town’s resident students go to school

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Source: CSDE EdSight Resident Town Dashboard (report notes: Report Notes_Choice-Town.pdf), read for every town by Data/fetch_edsight_resident_town.py. “Public Schools” is the town’s own local district; “Regional Schools” its regional district. A cell the state suppresses (counts of 5 or fewer; rates below 20 students) reads “suppressed”; a school type with no such students is not listed. These are town-of-residence figures and are not the same population as the operating-district figures above, even for a town whose residents mostly attend its own schools.

Resident students’ results, by school type and year

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08 What can this page not tell me?

How to read this page, and what it cannot say

  • Growth first, on purpose. On this build the six family-circumstance variables explain … of the variation in growth across districts but … of the variation in the achievement index. Growth is the measure less tied to who the students are — less, not untied — so it leads.
  • A position is not a grade. The residuals average to zero across districts, so a large share sit below the prediction line; the box above prints how many. A district inside the band is indistinguishable from the line; a district outside it is unusual for its demographics, in either direction, and the page does not say why.
  • Spending is on the state’s own weights. The need weights are the ones the General Assembly wrote into the Education Cost Sharing formula (CGS §10-262f(25)), applied to every year for comparability. They carry no weight for special education; the tuition-removed variant is the sensitivity for that.
  • Small districts move. Fewer than 500 tested students, and a three-year mean still swings from year to year; those districts are marked.
  • Two bases. District figures come from EFS by operating district; the town’s per-pupil figure comes from CSDE’s Net Current Expenditure report by town of fiscal responsibility, which folds a regional district’s cost back onto its member towns. They are shown separately and never added.

Method and every check: METHODOLOGY.md (“School performance vs. spending model”) and RESEARCH-school-performance-vs-spending.md in this repository; the full model with every input, note and margin is school_performance_model.json, and the file this page reads is school_performance_page.json.

The data behind these charts

Stonington’s own series behind the charts on this page, as text. Each table names the dataset it came from and the year of every row. The peer towns and group medians the charts also plot are not repeated here; they are in the same source files, linked in the footer.

Who Stonington is compared with

Surrounding towns 3 towns

Groton · Ledyard · North Stonington

The towns that share a border or an immediate labor market. Right for regional context; they are not matched on size or wealth.

District Reference Group D 23 towns

Berlin · Bethel · Branford · Clinton · Colchester · Cromwell · East Granby · East Hampton · East Lyme · Ledyard · Milford · New Milford · Newington · North Haven · Old Saybrook · Rocky Hill · Shelton · Southington · Wallingford · Waterford · Watertown · Wethersfield · Windsor

The CT State Department of Education grouping of school districts on family income, parent education, family structure and enrollment. Last assigned in 2006, and built for education questions rather than town-side spending.

Municipal peers 12 towns

Branford · Litchfield · Southbury · Waterford · Westbrook · Old Saybrook · Woodbury · Clinton · Milford · East Haddam · North Haven · Essex

Town-side spending, debt, reserves, and tax comparisons. Chosen by a published formula over state data rather than by hand: the nearest towns by standardized distance on the stated variables.

School peers 12 towns

Branford · Old Saybrook · Clinton · Litchfield · Southbury · Westbrook · Woodbury · Waterford · Essex · Bloomfield · Milford · East Haddam

Education spending comparisons. Chosen by a published formula over state data rather than by hand: the nearest towns by standardized distance on the stated variables.

Stonington is left out of each list above, because a town is never part of the benchmark it is measured against. Group medians elsewhere on the site exclude it the same way. Sources: surrounding towns and District Reference Group are the published groupings; the peer sets are built by a stated formula over CT OPM data (Data/build_peer_sets.py), not selected by hand.

Education spending and enrollment by fiscal year

Education spending and enrollment by fiscal year for Stonington, Connecticut
Fiscal year Enrollment (average daily membership) Education expenditures Per pupil Share of total spending
FY 2013-142,388$37,748,407$15,81063.1%
FY 2014-152,339$37,234,199$15,92062.2%
FY 2015-162,250$38,884,087$17,27862.0%
FY 2016-172,191$40,063,154$18,28662.9%
FY 2017-182,192$43,386,381$19,79762.9%
FY 2018-192,135$43,792,164$20,50860.5%
FY 2019-202,058$42,335,863$20,57259.1%
FY 2020-211,957$41,353,389$21,13458.2%
FY 2021-221,882$43,895,406$23,32458.9%
FY 2022-231,847$44,872,407$24,28958.8%

Per pupil here is OPM education expenditures divided by average daily membership. It is not the CT State Department of Education's Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil, which uses a narrower definition of spending and will differ. A town in a regional district reports only the grades it runs. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town.

Where Stonington sits among all 169 Connecticut towns, FY 2022-23

Where Stonington sits among all 169 Connecticut towns, FY 2022-23 for Stonington, Connecticut
Measure Stonington Rank, lowest to highest Statewide median
Total expenditures per resident$4,13879 of 169$4,217
Education expenditures per pupil$24,289112 of 169$22,590
Equalized mill rate11.70 mills20 of 16917.18 mills
Equalized net grand list per resident$327,170143 of 169$189,668
Total fund balance as a share of total expenditures30.7%146 of 16919.9%
Bonded long-term debt per resident$3,396142 of 169$1,741
Intergovernmental revenue as a share of total revenues9.0%22 of 16920.5%

A rank is a position, not a grade. Which end of the list is preferable depends on the measure and on what a reader is trying to find out. Per-pupil spending here is OPM education expenditures divided by average daily membership, which is not the state Department of Education's Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town. Ranks computed for FY 2022-23 across all 169 towns.