Financial Efficiency Star Rating (FESR)

0.5-5 star financial efficiency ratings — spending versus academic outcomes — for Georgia school districts and schools in FESR publication years (2016-2019, 2024).

Source: Governor's Office of Student Achievement (GOSA)
Year coverage: 2016–2024
Updated: annual
Version: 2.0.0
Schema hash: 388fc5498ebc

Detail levels available

DistrictSchool · default

Overview

Georgia Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) Financial Efficiency Star Rating (FESR) — the program's efficiency evaluation of each rolling window, rating how much a district spends per student against its CCRPI academic results on a 0.5-5.0 star scale (0.5 increments; more stars = better academic outcomes per dollar). Rows exist ONLY for the fiscal years an FESR publication evaluated: district rows FY2016-FY2019 and FY2024 (one per traditional Georgia system, with the three-year rolling per-pupil-expenditure average, the three-year CCRPI average, and the PPE percentile the rating is built from), and school rows FY2017-FY2019 and FY2024 (rating only — schools publish no rolling metrics). GOSA paused the program FY2020-FY2023, so those years have no rows. The FY2024 report revived the rating with a non-contiguous FY19+FY23+FY24 window. The underlying annual spending panel (total/federal/state-local expenditures, FTE enrollment, per-pupil expenditure for every fiscal year) now lives in the sibling per_pupil_expenditure topic, from which each rating's rolling window is built.

Row grain: One row per year, district_code, school_code.

Key metric

fesr_star_rating — FESR Star Rating (rating, 0.5–5)

The single headline value most answers want.

JSON schema →Data contract (YAML) →

Variables

Every column in the fact table. The code is the exact field name the API returns.

Column	Type	Unit	Range	Null?	Description
`year`Year	integer	—	—	no	Fiscal year the FESR publication treats as its newest (rated) year. Only publication years exist in this topic: 2016-2019 and 2024 for districts, 2017-2019 and 2024 for schools (the program paused FY2020-FY2023 — those years have no rows). Full description▾ Fiscal year the FESR publication treats as its newest (rated) year. Only publication years exist in this topic: 2016-2019 and 2024 for districts, 2017-2019 and 2024 for schools (the program paused FY2020-FY2023 — those years have no rows).
`district_code`District Code	string	—	—	no	GOSA district/system code (FK to districts dimension), zero-padded to 3 digits (7-digit codes are charter authorizers, school rows only). District-detail rows cover the 180 traditional school systems (codes 601-793); school-detail rows additionally include charter authorizer codes. Populated on every row. Full description▾ GOSA district/system code (FK to districts dimension), zero-padded to 3 digits (7-digit codes are charter authorizers, school rows only). District-detail rows cover the 180 traditional school systems (codes 601-793); school-detail rows additionally include charter authorizer codes. Populated on every row. Joins districts; adds its label columns.
`school_code`School Code	string	—	—	yes	GOSA school code, zero-padded to 4 characters (composite FK to schools dimension with district_code; not globally unique on its own). Populated on school rows only — district aggregate rows carry NULL. Full description▾ GOSA school code, zero-padded to 4 characters (composite FK to schools dimension with district_code; not globally unique on its own). Populated on school rows only — district aggregate rows carry NULL. Joins schools; adds its label columns.
`per_pupil_expenditure_three_year_avg`Per Pupil Expenditure Three Year Average	number	currency	—	yes	Three-year rolling average of the district's per-pupil expenditure (nominal dollars) over the publication's window — a rating input. FY2024's window is non-contiguous (FY19+FY23+FY24). District-detail rows only. The yearly per-pupil values live in the sibling per_pupil_expenditure topic. Full description▾ Three-year rolling average of the district's per-pupil expenditure (nominal dollars) over the publication's window — a rating input. FY2024's window is non-contiguous (FY19+FY23+FY24). District-detail rows only. The yearly per-pupil values live in the sibling per_pupil_expenditure topic.
`ccrpi_three_year_avg`CCRPI Three Year Average	number	score	0–100	yes	Three-year rolling average of the district's CCRPI Single Score (0-100 scale) over the publication's window — the academic-outcome input of the rating. District-detail rows only. Full description▾ Three-year rolling average of the district's CCRPI Single Score (0-100 scale) over the publication's window — the academic-outcome input of the rating. District-detail rows only.
`per_pupil_expenditure_percentile`Per Pupil Expenditure Percentile	integer	percentile	—	yes	Percentile rank (1-100 integer) of the district's per_pupil_expenditure_three_year_avg among all 180 Georgia districts in the same publication — population-based, not a national percentile. Higher = more spending per pupil. District-detail rows only. Full description▾ Percentile rank (1-100 integer) of the district's per_pupil_expenditure_three_year_avg among all 180 Georgia districts in the same publication — population-based, not a national percentile. Higher = more spending per pupil. District-detail rows only.
`fesr_star_rating`FESR Star Rating	number	rating	0.5–5	yes	Financial efficiency star rating, 0.5-5.0 in half-star steps — more stars mean better academic outcomes per dollar spent. Full description▾ Financial Efficiency Star Rating in 0.5 increments. Districts: observed 1.0-5.0; schools: 0.5-5.0 (the value range spans both levels). Half-steps enforced by a quality check. Bronze stores it as Float64 in early files and as strings in later files; non-numeric publisher statuses (district 'Non-Compliant'; school '.', 'Non-Compliant[ in 20YY]') are NULLed here, with non-compliance preserved via is_non_compliant.
`is_non_compliant`Is Non Compliant	boolean	—	—	yes	True when the district or school was flagged non-compliant with financial reporting (no star rating issued); false otherwise — including rows the publisher listed without issuing a rating, so false does not guarantee a published rating. Full description▾ FESR publication outcome: true when the source flags the entity non-compliant (no star rating exists, so fesr_star_rating is NULL — enforced by a quality check); false when the publisher processed the entity normally; NULL when no outcome was published. The false/NULL boundary is ERA-DEPENDENT, faithful to bronze (same behavior as the pre-split approved topic): the 2017/2018 school files publish an explicit status column, so rated rows AND the '.' listed-without-rating rows (103 in 2017, 127 in 2018) carry false; the 2019/2024 numeric school files publish no status, so rated rows carry NULL. A school's 2018-file 'Non-Compliant in 2017' sentinel is served on both the 2017 and 2018 rows (Cirrus Charter 7830611/0611), as the publisher restated it. Districts: the 2018 report's 'Non-Compliant' status (Talbot County 730). The FY2021 pause-year PPE-sentinel flag (7830629/0629) falls outside the publication years and is not carried (see limitations).

Filters

Query parameters the fact endpoint accepts. Comma-separated values are OR within a parameter; multiple parameters AND together.

Parameter	Kind	Allowed values	Notes
`year`	year_exact	any value	—
`year_min`	year_range	any value	—
`year_max`	year_range	any value	—
`detail`	detail	`districtsschools`	enum-enforced, default: schools
`district_code`	foreign_key	any value	multi-value
`school_code`	foreign_key	any value	multi-value
`is_non_compliant`	categorical	any value	multi-value
`district_type`	dimension_attribute	7 allowed values▾ `commission_charter` `resa` `standard` `state_agency` `state_charter` `state_school` `state_special`	multi-value, enum-enforced
`school_level`	dimension_attribute	`elementarymiddlehighk12other`	multi-value, enum-enforced
`locale`	dimension_attribute	`citysuburbtownrural`	multi-value, enum-enforced

Example requests

Run these against the base URL — they return live data.

All rows (first page), schools level

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/education/financial_efficiency_star_rating"

schools data for 2024

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/education/financial_efficiency_star_rating?year=2024"

One district (code 657), 2024

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/education/financial_efficiency_star_rating?district_code=657&year=2024&detail=districts"

Download 2024 as CSV

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/education/financial_efficiency_star_rating?year=2024&format=csv"

Notes & limitations

NULL handling

Zero is a real, reported value.

Limitations

Rows exist only for FESR publication years — district rows FY2016-FY2019 and FY2024, school rows FY2017-FY2019 and FY2024. GOSA paused the program FY2020-FY2023: those years have NO rows (they are not NULL-padded), and year-over-year comparisons across the pause span a five-year gap and a methodology revision (the FY2024 rating uses a non-contiguous FY19+FY23+FY24 window). Two detail levels (district, school) in one fact table, split by parquet filename; school_code is NULL on district rows. The rolling-window metrics (per_pupil_expenditure_three_year_avg, ccrpi_three_year_avg, per_pupil_expenditure_percentile) are district-only — school rows carry the rating and compliance flag alone. Report-year school rows with no rating outcome at all are omitted (their spending facts live in the per_pupil_expenditure topic). The single FY2021 pause-year non-compliance flag (school 7830629/0629) is not carried — it falls outside the publication-year row structure. The annual spending panel behind the ratings (expenditures, FTE enrollment, per-pupil expenditure, FY2014-FY2024) lives in the sibling per_pupil_expenditure topic; the former merged topic's ccrpi_single_score column was dropped from both derived topics in the v2 split (annual CCRPI scores are served by the ccrpi_* topics). FESR methodology evolved across publications; cross-year comparisons should account for GOSA-documented methodology drift. No cell-level small-cell suppression exists in this source; NULLs are structural, never suppression.