Right for Vermont Foundation

A non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to advancing practical, market-based policy solutions rooted in limited government, individual liberty, and public accountability.

About This Project

What this site is for

This site is designed to make Vermont school information easier to understand. It brings together state assessment results, per-pupil spending, staffing data, and school location data into one public-facing experience so families, taxpayers, journalists, and policymakers can explore the landscape more clearly.

Project background

While student enrollment has fallen by roughly 30% since the late 1990s, the state's education system has continued to maintain unusually small class sizes, high teacher and staff-to-student ratios, and a comparatively large number of instructional support personnel. During the same period, annual education spending has nearly tripled, growing to more than $2.5 billion for the 2026-2027 school year. Today, Vermont spends more than $30,000 per public school student each year, yet student performance has not improved accordingly.

Jump to

Vermonters deserve school information that is easier to navigate and easier to compare. Public education data is often scattered across separate downloads, dashboards, and documents. This dashboard brings that public information together in one school explorer with:

searchable school profiles
interactive statewide mapping
side-by-side school comparison
plain-language context around the data sources

School-level assessment outcomes, including proficiency bands
High-level financial context, including per-pupil expenditures
Staffing and student-to-teacher ratio data
Map-based browsing across Vermont
Source notes describing where the data came from

Assessment Presentation

On the map and in school summary views, these results are also shown in a simplified three-part summary to make comparisons easier:

Meets or exceeds expectations reflects Total Proficient and Above
Developing reflects Partially Proficient
Needs support reflects Substantially Below Proficient

This summary is meant to provide a quick high-level view. More detailed state categories remain available in the underlying assessment data.

Where available, the site also shows a breakdown for students from lower-income households:

Eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRL)
Not eligible for free or reduced-price lunch

The information on this site comes from public Vermont education records and public map data. We’ve gathered those materials in one place so it’s easier to explore and compare schools.

Primary Sources

Vermont teacher and staff data
https://education.vermont.gov/documents/teacher-and-staff-fte-report
Vermont per-pupil spending data for school year 2024
https://education.vermont.gov/documents/sy24-vermont-per-pupil-expenditures
Vermont per-pupil spending overview, 2020 to 2024
https://education.vermont.gov/education-quality-assurance/annual-snapshot/per-pupil-expenditures
Vermont assessment results
https://education.vermont.gov/data-and-reporting/vermont-education-dashboard/vermont-education-dashboard-assessment
School location and boundary reference data
https://data-nces.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/fea227e1db554290a1dcf88dfb1c3779_1/explore?location=37.739809%2C-90.277652%2C5

What’s Included Here

This site brings together school performance, spending, staffing, and location information from several public sources. In some cases, those sources cover schools or years a little differently, so not every school will have the same level of detail.

School Coverage

Public schools make up the bulk of the information shown on this site. Private schools, homeschool-related records, and other partial-coverage entries may appear in public source data, but much less information is available for them.

A Note On Interpretation

This site is intended to help users explore public data, not replace official state reports and documentation. Some schools have incomplete coverage across years or sources. Where data does not fit cleanly, we preserve those gaps rather than fill them with guesses.

A Few Things To Keep In Mind

Some state-reported values are withheld or unavailable.
Financial and staffing reports may measure schools in different ways.
Some older school records do not line up perfectly with current directories.
Information for non-public schools is more limited than information for public schools.

Spending And Staffing

Financial and staffing data come from separate Vermont source files. Those files do not always allocate costs in exactly the same way. For that reason:

salary and benefits are preserved as reported
per-pupil expenditure values are preserved as reported
mismatches are treated as source differences, not “corrected” automatically