Local districts pull in poor grades SCHOOLS Few in region place near top in statewide rankings from A1

Ohio ranks 35th nationwide in the amount of money its school have for students, according to an annual report by the National Education Association.

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Ohio has more students in its schools than most other states, but it's in the middle of the pack in how much it pays its teachers and in the bottom third of the 50 states in how much money schools receive.

Below are data and national rankings from the National Education Association's annual "Rankings of the States and Estimates of School Statistics." That teachers union, one of the two large such unions in the country, has been compiling a version of this nationwide comparison for 70 years.

Though the union openly states that a goal of the report is to bring more revenue to schools and increase teacher pay, the comparisons of states are generally accepted within the education community as accurate and fair.

Here's how Ohio stacked up in this year's report, with data from the 2014-15 school year:

Ohio has the 8th-most students in school every day: Ohio ranks 8th in average daily attendance, with a little more than 1.6 million students.

California is the largest with 6.2 million students and Vermont the smallest with 57,311.

Ohio has the 9th-lowest ratio of students to teacher: Ohio has 17.2 students for every teacher in its schools, ranking it 9th in the nation.

Note that this is not the number of students in each classroom. The number of teachers included in this calculation also counts music, art, gym and other teachers.

Vermont has the lowest ratio, with just 9.7 students per teacher. Utah is the highest at 22.8 students per teacher.

Ohio is 21st in teacher pay: Ohio's $56,172 average pay for teachers places it 21st, right in the middle of the pack.

Leading the way is New York at $77,628 while South Dakota is at the bottom at $40,934.

Note that the NEA's listed teacher pay for Ohio is $700 more than we reported earlier this week when comparing teacher pay by district, likely because the two tallies counted different groups of "teachers." Defining what positions are counted as "teachers" becomes a gray area, with school librarians, therapists and others having very blended roles, while also being part of local teachers unions.

Ohio is 35th in school revenue: The Plain Dealer this week shared what each school district spends per student.

NEA takes a slightly different approach when comparing states and looks at revenue - all of the dollars a school can spend - compared to the average daily attendance.

With $11,436 available to spend on each student, Ohio places 35th.

At the top is Vermont - clearly an outlier in a few categories - at $37,130 per student. Six other states - Rhode Island, Wyoming, Alaska, Delaware, Connecticut and Pennsylvania - top the $20,000 mark.

Nevada is at the bottom at $7,320 per student.

For other snapshots of school finances, click here to see what schools in Ohio pay school staff like bus drivers, superintendents and lunch servers and click here for a look at how poverty, special education needs and English Language Learners affect school costs.

Here's a chart with data from all 50 states, ordered by the number of students.