Instruction Spending Share by State (NCES F-33)

Nationwide, about 59.5% of current district spending goes directly to instruction, but the share ranges from 64.3% in Minnesota to 47.9% in District of Columbia. PlainSchools ranks all 51 reporting state systems, drawn from the federal F-33 School District Finance Survey.

Research period:

Compiled by PlainSchools Editorial on 2026-07-01

Key finding

Across the 49,156,194 public-school students in districts reporting to the F-33 survey, roughly 59.5% of current (non-capital) spending goes directly to instruction.

The instruction share is highest in Minnesota, at 64.3% of current spending, and lowest in District of Columbia, at 47.9%. A lower share is not automatically worse -- it can reflect heavier investment in student-support staff like counselors and nurses, which NCES tracks as a separate spending category.

Research question

Every education dollar a district spends is split across instruction (teacher and aide salaries, textbooks, instructional supplies), support services (counseling, administration, transportation, operations), and capital projects. Across the 51 state systems with enough reporting students, what share of CURRENT (non-capital) spending actually reaches instruction, and where is that share highest and lowest?

Methodology

For each state, the figure is a true dollar-weighted aggregate: the sum of every reporting district's instruction expenditures divided by the sum of their current expenditures, drawn from the National Center for Education Statistics' F-33 School District Finance Survey for FY2021-22. Aggregating by total dollars (rather than averaging each district's own ratio) means large districts influence the state figure in proportion to how much they actually spend; a state needs at least 20,000 reporting students to be ranked so a handful of tiny districts cannot distort it.

"Current" expenditures exclude capital outlay (new construction, major renovations) and debt service, so this figure isolates year-to-year operating spending. Figures are recomputed live from the database on every request, so nothing here is hand-entered.

See the methodology page for source vintage and full details.

States with the highest instruction spending share

Top 10 by share of current spending on instruction (NCES F-33, FY2021-22)

1. Minnesota64.3%2. New Hampshire63.5%3. Utah63.1%4. Nebraska63%5. North Carolina63%6. Maryland62.9%7. New York62.8%8. Iowa62%9. Massachusetts61.2%10. Pennsylvania60.8%

All 51 state systems, ranked

Instruction spending share, highest first. Every state links to its full profile; figures update with each F-33 release.

# State Instruction share Districts reporting Students
1 Minnesota 64.3% 538 869,866
2 New Hampshire 63.5% 162 160,368
3 Utah 63.1% 155 690,666
4 Nebraska 63.0% 246 327,273
5 North Carolina 63.0% 322 1,523,858
6 Maryland 62.9% 24 881,064
7 New York 62.8% 1,009 1,686,766
8 Iowa 62.0% 327 510,661
9 Massachusetts 61.2% 396 910,643
10 Pennsylvania 60.8% 763 1,677,436
11 Georgia 60.5% 220 1,740,097
12 New Jersey 60.5% 650 1,371,504
13 Kansas 60.3% 288 485,317
14 Connecticut 60.2% 197 506,802
15 North Dakota 60.2% 168 116,803
16 Illinois 60.0% 848 1,861,261
17 Florida 59.9% 67 2,805,486
18 Virginia 59.7% 131 1,248,725
19 Idaho 59.6% 173 311,080
20 Montana 59.5% 396 148,969
21 Ohio 59.5% 984 1,682,626
22 Tennessee 59.5% 142 986,112
23 Vermont 59.5% 112 83,389
24 Texas 59.0% 1,204 5,425,532
25 Kentucky 58.6% 173 654,223
26 Washington 58.3% 318 1,080,373
27 Hawaii 58.2% 1 173,178
28 Wyoming 58.2% 48 92,756
29 California 58.1% 1,914 5,810,698
30 South Dakota 58.1% 149 141,021
31 West Virginia 58.0% 57 252,720
32 New Mexico 57.9% 143 316,370
33 Nevada 57.7% 19 486,619
34 Wisconsin 57.5% 423 818,686
35 Oregon 57.3% 199 551,604
36 Maine 57.1% 231 172,760
37 South Carolina 57.1% 74 772,218
38 Alabama 56.3% 147 748,274
39 Mississippi 56.3% 148 441,926
40 Rhode Island 56.3% 62 138,517
41 Indiana 55.8% 407 1,035,176
42 Michigan 55.5% 879 1,406,794
43 Missouri 55.3% 553 887,517
44 Oklahoma 55.1% 540 683,397
45 Arkansas 55.0% 256 488,965
46 Delaware 54.9% 42 139,935
47 Arizona 54.0% 643 1,113,885
48 Colorado 54.0% 184 880,435
49 Alaska 53.3% 54 129,944
50 Louisiana 52.9% 189 678,873
51 District of Columbia 47.9% 63 88,848

Source: U.S. Department of Education, NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, FY2021-22. Expenditure figures are self-reported by districts to state education agencies. U.S. Department of Education, NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, FY2021-22. Expenditure figures are self-reported by districts to state education agencies.

What the data shows

Instruction share varies by roughly a sixth of the budget between states

The gap between Minnesota and District of Columbia is 16.4 percentage points of current spending -- a meaningful difference in how education dollars are allocated between direct instruction and everything else a district runs. That gap does not by itself say which approach serves students better; it reflects differences in staffing structure (how many support-service staff a district employs relative to teachers), district size and overhead, and local budget priorities.

A spending-mix share is a starting question, not a verdict

A high instruction share does not mean a state's schools are better funded or better run; a district could post a high instruction share simply because it employs very few student-support staff, which is not necessarily a strength. Read this alongside the per-pupil spending and federal-funding-share analyses to see the fuller funding picture, not the instruction share in isolation.

What this figure does and does not cover

This figure is a dollar-weighted aggregate of current (non-capital) spending for FY2021-22, a year with elevated federal ESSER relief funds still being spent down in many districts. It describes how the education dollar is SPLIT, not how many dollars a district spends per pupil in absolute terms -- pair it with the per-pupil spending analysis for the fuller picture. It does not measure teacher pay levels, class sizes, or instructional quality, does not break the figure down by district poverty level or urbanicity, and does not capture capital investment (new buildings, major renovations) at all, since those are excluded from the "current" spending base by design.

What this analysis cannot tell us

This is the share of CURRENT (non-capital) district expenditures that NCES classifies as "instruction" under the F-33 School District Finance Survey for FY2021-22, computed as a true dollar-weighted aggregate across all reporting districts in a state, not a simple average of district ratios. "Instruction" spending, by NCES definition, covers teacher and aide salaries and benefits, textbooks, and instructional supplies and equipment. It does NOT include student-support services such as counseling, health services, or transportation, which NCES tracks separately as "support services" spending -- so a lower instruction share is not automatically a worse outcome; it can reflect a state investing more heavily in counselors, nurses, or other student-support staff, which is itself a real form of investment in students. This figure also does not capture teacher pay levels, class sizes, or instructional quality, only how the budget is categorized. FY2021-22 was a year when COVID-relief (ESSER) funds were still being spent down in many districts, which can shift the mix relative to a typical pre-pandemic year. This page reports the overall state average only and does not break the figure down by district poverty level or urbanicity.

States with the lowest instruction spending share

The 10 states with the lowest share of current spending on instruction (NCES F-33, FY2021-22)

District of Columbia47.9%Louisiana52.9%Alaska53.3%Colorado54%Arizona54%Delaware54.9%Arkansas55%Oklahoma55.1%Missouri55.3%Michigan55.5%

Related data

Sources

Cite this analysis

PlainSchools. (2026). Instruction Spending Share by State (NCES F-33). https://plainschools.com/research/instruction-spending-share-by-state/