> you are saying school (1,2,3) get same funding per pupil. but test score for 1 is worse than 3. Yes, and in fact its petty big jumps. 3 >> 2 >> 1. We are

> you are saying school (1,2,3) get same funding per pupil. but test score for 1 is worse than 3. Yes, and in fact its petty big jumps. 3 >> 2 >> 1. We are talking like 95th, 50th, and 10th percentiles statewide (percentiles picked for effect, did not pull up the data) > Any idea how they could be compared in a data-drive way? Right, and that is the hard part. If they don't do the same tests, you cannot have this data. However, the more you look at layers of this data, you will find that the most important thing you care. Parents looking at school rankings have kids that perform much better than kids that have parent's who do not look at this data. For me, I knew that 3 or 4 would give my kids a fine education. So I toured both (and actually had an older kid already in #3). The reason I sprang for #4 was 1) Smaller class size. Something like 15 kids per class, vs 30. All else being equal, you get way more chances for success the closer you are to the teacher. 2) Likeminded parents. People send kids there because they want the best. They are the high achievers. The college profressors and doctors of the area. #3 wasn't too far off, but you still got to see stuff like parents smoking in the carline with their windows up and the kids locked inside (grrrr). 3) More opportunities. #3 school starts music class at like 6th grade. #4 starts like 2nd or 3rd grade. It is something not reflected in test scores, so not important to public schools. But something shown to be good, so it's available for parents.