School-level per pupil school expenditure data for Wisconsin school districts and independent charter schools is available in the WISEdash Public Portal.
Overview
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law in December 2015, added to federal law the requirement for School Level Reporting (SLR). However, with the subsequent change in federal administrations, there is currently (as of October 1, 2018) no formal implementation guidance from the U.S. Department of Education. In response, the Council of Chief State School Officers, working with the Georgetown University Edunomics Lab, convened the Financial Transparency Working Group (FitWig) to discuss and provide recommendations on some of the more detailed questions prompted by SLR.
The federal ESSA (Title I, section 1111) requires each local education agency (LEA) to report expenditures to their state education agency (SEA), who, in turn, report that information to the U.S. Department of Education. Under this reporting requirement, expenditures are reported per school, by funding source (either with federal funds or with state or local funds) and by per-pupil. The Bureau of School Financial Services (SFS) worked with the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials and other stakeholders to develop an online collection tool that assists districts and other Wisconsin LEAs in meeting this requirement.
To meet the transparency requirement, DPI has implemented the ESSA school level per-pupil expenditure reporting requirement starting with 2018-19 data, which is available in the WISEdash Public Portal.
Statement on Implementation of the ESSA Fiscal Transparency Requirement
Data Collection through WiSFiP
Data for the School Level Report is collected through the Wisconsin School Finance Reporting Portal (WiSFiP) and utilizes the District’s ledger with data pushed to WISEdata Finance after the Annual Report is completed. This data is then placed in the WISEdash Public Portal. Data for 2023-24 was released in March 2025 and data for 2024-25 will be released in March 2026.
District/LEA staff access the School Level Reporting application via the Wisconsin State Finance Portal (WiSFiP). District personnel responsible for filing the School Level Report can find assistance accessing WiSFiP, if needed, on the WISEdata Finance and WiSFiP page of the DPI Website.