Each year, the Michigan Department of Education collects and audits data from Michigan’s public schools and transmits the resulting database to the U.S. Department of Education. This database is called the National Public Education Finance Survey, and the state version is available to the public as a single, lengthy PDF.

Michigan’s data have been compiled into an interactive Web database by the authors and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The Web database may be accessed to create reports, perform comparisons between local school districts, sort districts in terms of certain revenue and spending categories and so on. It is available at www.mackinac.org/michiganschoolmoney. As of this writing, fiscal 2006 was the most recent year for which these revenue and expenditure data were available.