Methodology

Project KIDS requests detailed, comprehensive payroll data for all employees from each school district. This information is not requested from charter schools, to reduce the burden on these smaller institutions. Instead, charter school payroll data is queried from the Transparent Utah database. The disaggregated payroll data from school districts gives a higher level of detail than their compensation data on Transparent Utah.

The payroll data from each school district is disaggregated, so that compensation totals are separated by person/year/account code/description. This allows for more specific allocation of compensation to classes and students. For example, for a teacher whose salary consists of both contract teaching compensation and a coaching stipend, the teaching compensation is allocated to the classes she teaches while the coaching stipend is allocated to her team, if those students can be identified. This level of detail prevents over-inflation of teachers’ instructional salaries and allows for more precise resource allocation to students.

Payroll data is merged with the Utah State Board of Education’s (USBE) CACTUS data, which contains teachers’ credential information such as degree level and years of experience. The data is also merged with the student-level course data from USBE’s UTREx database, to match teachers to their classes, the students in each class, and the school(s) where they are teaching.

This dashboard contains teacher wage and qualification information for all local education agencies (LEA) in Utah. Teachers are only included if they

1. taught a class in USBE’s course data,
2. were registered in the USBE CACTUS data system, and
3. were paid from the LEA's payroll.

Payroll data is merged with the course and CACTUS information by fuzzy matching names in the payroll file to names in the CACTUS file. For a more detailed explanation of the name matching process, please refer to our technical manual, pages 30-32.

Teacher Pay Types

Pay types are determined by account codes and descriptions in the payroll data. These fields are used to

1. categorize each transaction as either wages or benefits and
2. determine which wages and benefits are instructional.

Transactions are categorized as instructional if the account code and description indicate that the pay was meant for the teacher's instructional duties in the classroom.

Since most charter school payroll data is less detailed than districts, teachers’ instructional pay could sometimes be over-inflated because line-by-line transactions are often unavailable. Therefore, pay for teachers' instructional duties cannot be separated from pay for other roles or duties. Administrators and other staff may be included in this dashboard if they taught courses throughout the year. However, their pay for administrative tasks will not count in their total instructional pay calculations.

For more information regarding the Project KIDS payroll methodology, please refer to pages 27-34 of the Technical Manual at the following link: