Aaron Bullen’s Administrator & Teacher Pay Analysis

Welcome to the Aaron Bullen "Administrator & Teacher Pay Dashboard." This tool helps the public, educators, and policymakers understand the growth of Local Education Agency (LEA) compensation. We would like to thank Aaron Bullen for his suggestion of this dashboard.

How to use this Dashboard

Pages

Click a tab below to view different pages.

  • Statewide Totals: Statewide summary across all school systems. This tool provides a high-level overview of compensation changes, by category and fiscal year.
  • LEA Specific: Examines trends in a single LEA, allowing users to explore how teacher pay has changed over time within a selected school system.
  • Additional Graphs: Displays distribution plots that show how spending is spread within a single LEA. These graphs help users understand the range and concentration of spending amounts.
Interactive Components
  • Filters: Each page has filters on the left hand side of the page. The filters on the left side of the page can be used to select between fiscal years, compensation types, all employees or full time employees, and to remove outliers.
  • Charts: You can use your mouse to hover or click on chart points to learn more about the data you see.
  • Tables: You can use the download buttons to save the table as a CSV file.

Definitions and Methodology

  • Description: Project KIDS is a detailed performance audit of public education in Utah, integrating financial, operational, and academic data to help stakeholders understand how education funds are allocated and used across the state.
  • Sources: Data is from the Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and participating Local Education Agencies (LEAs), including both school districts and charter schools.
  • Timespan: Fiscal Years 2014 - 2024

Definitions of terms used in the dashboard:

  • Administrators: Includes district and school level leadership such as superintendents, business administrators, principals, and other executives.
  • Teachers: Classroom educators responsible for direct instruction.
  • Aides & Paraprofessionals: Staff who support teachers in the classroom, including instructional aides, paraprofessionals, and similar roles.
  • Other Staff: All other school personnel such as librarians, custodians, lunchroom workers, secretaries, and substitute teachers.
  • Uncategorized: Entries that could not be cleanly classified due to missing or inconsistent job codes or data entry issues.
  • Local Education Agency (LEA): Public school districts and charter schools in the state responsible for operating and managing local public schools.
  • Salary: The regular base pay an employee receives for their contracted work.
  • Benefits: Non-wage compensation provided to employees in addition to salary. This typically includes retirement contributions, health insurance, dental and vision coverage, and life insurance.

This analysis utilizes compensation data from Project Kids for illustrative purposes. Please note that the dataset does not include crucial factors such as years of experience, educational level, or full-time/part-time employment status. These variables can significantly influence actual pay levels and should be considered when interpreting results. This data should not be used for direct compensation comparisons between entities. This dataset is based on raw submissions from local entities; despite quality checks, some errors and reporting anomalies may affect year-to-year compensation changes.

Understanding the Statewide Line Graph

This line graph displays total payroll expenses for all LEAs in the state. The graph can be filtered by compensation type (Total, Salary, or Benefits) and employment (All or Full-Time Employees Only). Use the fiscal year slider to adjust the range of years displayed — by default, all available years are shown. This view shows overall spending trends and changes over time across all LEAs statewide.

Tip: Hover over data points on the chart to see specific values.

Understanding the Percent Change Graph

This graph displays the statewide year-over-year percentage change in spending for teachers and administrators. It compares how compensation has changed annually for these two employee groups. Like the line graph, this chart can be filtered by compensation type and by employment type. Use this graph to assess relative growth trends in payroll spending.

Tip: Hover over data points on the chart to see specific values.

Understanding the Boxplot

This LEA specific boxplot shows the distribution of average spending within each job category for the selected LEA and fiscal year. The line inside the box shows the median compensation which helps visualize how compensation varies among roles.

Tip: Hover over each box to see the category, count of employees, median, and max values.

Understanding the Percent Change Plot

This LEA line graph shows the year-over-year percentage change in average compensation over time. Each point shows the percent increase or decrease compared to the previous year.

Tip: Hover over individual data points on the chart to see specific values.
Note: Each category panel uses its own y-axis scale, which means curve heights represent relative distributions within groups and should not be compared directly across categories.

Understanding the Density Plot

A density plot shows how the values of a variable are distributed. It smooths out the distribution to help show where values are more or less concentrated. In this chart, the y-axis represents the count — so taller sections indicate more frequent values in the data.

Tip: Hover over each graph to view summary statistics

Understanding the Boxplot Plot

A boxplot summarizes the distribution of a variable for different categories. This boxplot shows total earnings per employee by job category. Each box highlights the median and middle 50% of values, with whiskers indicating variation beyond that range and points showing potential outliers.

Tip: Use the box size and whiskers to compare variability and medians across groups.