Franklin posts a good ROI for education

The Center for American Progress has published a report on "Return on Educational Investment
A District-by-District Evaluation of U.S. Educational Productivity"

This report is the culmination of a yearlong effort to study the efficiency of the nation’s public education system and includes the first-ever attempt to evaluate the productivity of almost every major school district in the country. In the business world, the notion of productivity describes the benefit received in exchange for effort or money expended. Our project measures the academic achievement a school district produces relative to its educational spending, while controlling for factors outside a district’s control, such as cost of living and students in poverty.

You can read the introduction and summary here (PDF file).

Download the full report PDF file and read it on your own here

You can also view an interactive map of the MA school districts to see visual comparisons of Franklin and surrounding communities. (You can also view other states and school districts.)  The interactive map is found here.

In between the map and the table of MA communities, there is a link that you can follow to find each school districts full report. The Franklin district report is here. As the district is credited with 11 schools I assume that the charter school is considered part of this.

I found these stats of interest:

Who pays for the Franklin Public Schools to educate our children?
Revenue by source: 
 Federal - 3%
 State - 50%
 Local - 47%

Maybe those who say the School District has too many administrators will recognize that this says otherwise
Total current expenditures 
 Instructional expenditures - 72%
 Student and staff support - 7%
 Administration - 6%
 Operations, food service, other - 15%



If you think there are changes that should be made to the way Franklin spends it money, you can participate in this survey to help determine our priority listing.

Updated: via email from Maureen Sabolinski, Superintendent of Schools, I am reminded that the data reflected here was taken prior to the most recent budget cuts. The academic focus is solely on the MCAS results. Both of these factors should be taken in consideration as you review the report. Franklin's schools do more with less than is reflected here.


Franklin, MA