Office of Planning and Research

Resource Allocation and District Action Reports (RADAR)

RADAR: Spend Smarter and Meet Your District Goals

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Resource Allocation and District Action Reports provide districts with new ways to analyze use of their resources of people, time, and money. Compare a district to 10 others selected by the user. Five-year trends show the big picture of a district. Visual data makes data analysis more accessible.

RADAR reports have been developed with input from district leaders and business officials. About 30 districts are working with the Department in pilots and grant programs to try new approaches to resource decisions and focus on reallocating scarce resources to strategic priorities. Department staff offer training on RADAR in a number of venues.

RADAR Benchmarking can be downloaded from the link below. District personnel also have access via the Department's Security Portal to two additional RADAR packages on Special Education and Class Size/Student Courses.

RADAR Benchmarking

Update 7/23/18: Home now includes 2017 state assessment results for both Next Generation and Legacy MCAS. FY2017 finance data now reflect final amendments from districts. The Change Over 5 Years report's District and School Leadership FTEs were corrected. They previously included instructional coaches; they now include only district administrators, district instructional leaders, and school leadership. The chart now correctly states the years included as 2014-2018.

Download the Excel file again when data is updated.

Get started on the Home tab; select a target district and ten comparison districts. Review the reports: State Context, Change Over Five Years, Per Pupil Expenditures, Staff FTEs per 100 Students, SPED Enrollment Comparison, and SPED Staff Comparison.

Help is available in the file; Getting Started and More About Data tabs; and comments on "How to use this report" at the top of each page. The Change Over Five Years report includes both a single page of charts and a discussion guide that takes user through the charts one section at a time.

For other data tools, see DARTs.

District personnel also have access via the Department's Security Portal to RADAR Special Education and RADAR Class Size/Student Courses.

Contact radar@doe.mass.edu with comments and suggestions.