reportingfalsenews

like this?

Through our investigation, we found that 20 percent of the funds – nearly $3 billion – end up in rich school districts.

So 80% end up in poor school districts? I'm not really seeing the problem here, aside from some minor adjustments perhaps.

And: How is rich defined? Where are the other 80%? I skimmed through the article and didn't find anything on how the other 80% are distributed (do they go predominantly to poor districts? Is there a large portion for "average" districts?)

You also bring up stuff like:

How is it then that a school district like Nottoway, with a child poverty rate of 30 percent, receives so much less in federal support than Fairfax, one of the wealthiest districts in the country?

"so much less" without giving the amount of poor students and the amount of aid each is just trying to influence opinion without any basis. Also, Nottoway is at 1,153$ per poor child, Fairfax at 1,270$ per poor child. I wouldn't call that "so much less", but definitely something to improve on.

Virginia’s Mecklenburg County, for example, with a child poverty rate of 30 percent, receives $1,000 per poor student through Title I – the same amount as poor students in York County, where the child poverty rate is less than 6 percent.

And why exactly should they receive less per poor student? Or have you just worded that incredibly bad?

Thanks for answering!

Rich is defined by the median poverty rate and if it is above or below that (which is about 17 percent).

So this is a binary classification then? That seems a bit, uh, coarse.

Re: the 80 percent. We chose to focus on two school districts that highlighted the funding disparities (in the total amount of funds per year). If you read through the story and look at the graphs, it includes most districts in the country and we provide multiple examples in our stories of different types of school districts. If you're interested in the nitty-gritty of average versus very poor versus somewhat poor, we encourage you to spend some time with the tables and maps in the story.

Assuming from the answer to the first question, you actually classified the other 80% as poor. Maybe this is the US thing, but i have never read an article in a german newspaper that did this kind of coarse classification, it kinda undermines your goal here to be honest ;)

The difference on an aggregate level is whopping. On a per poor child basis, there is a difference, but it isn't as much.

So the per poor child basis excludes a certain amount (and apparently not too small) of the total money? What is the reasoning behind this? Especially because for me it looks like it contradicts this:

One might expect that if a district has X poor kids or Y poverty rate that it would get Z dollars. That isn't the case though and that example illustrates that.

And another thing i noticed from your answer: What does "state funding" in the table mean? Is it actually supposed to be "cumulated federal funding"? I thought state=New York, Virginia,etc and federal=US government or "washington".