For more than 25 years the Public School Forum of North Carolina has isolated state and federal spending to examine the capacity and effort counties make to support their schools. The intent of the annual Local School Finance Study is not to blame counties for their effort to support schools, but to examine the capacity and actual effort the state's 100 counties make to support 115 school districts. The 2013 Local School Finance Study examines data from the 2011-12 school year. The primary source of financial information is the Financial and Business Services Division at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, which provided the non-property tax revenue, low wealth and small county supplemental funding information, final average daily membership numbers, effective county tax rate, adjusted revenue tax base, and current expense. Other sources include the North Carolina Department of Revenue's Tax Research and Ad Valorem Tax Divisions, which provided the 2011-12 property tax valuations and tax rates. The state's public schools spent $11.2 billion in the 2011-12 school year using a combination of state, federal, and local resources. State funding accounts for 62 percent of expenditures, federal funding accounts for 14 percent, and local funding accounts for 24 percent of spending. According to a recent National Education Association survey, North Carolina ranks 11th in the Nation and 2nd in the Southeast for the highest percentage of funds from state revenue. The National Average is 45.5 percent. [For the 2012 report, see ED585782.]