Petal Primary School, in Petal, Mississippi, is part of the Petal School District. The school reports enrolling 950 students in grades pre-kindergarten through two, and it has 58 teachers on staff.

Petal Primary School is below the state average but above the district average in terms of the percentage of its students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. On average, 64 percent of students in Mississippi are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch programs, whereas 53 percent of Petal Primary School students are eligible. At the district level, 51 percent of students are eligible.

ProPublica's analysis found that all too often, states and schools provide poor students fewer educational programs like Advanced Placement, gifted and talented programs, and advanced math and science classes. Studies have linked participation in these programs with better outcomes later in life. Our analysis uses free and reduced-price lunch to estimate poverty at schools. We based our findings on the most comprehensive data set of access to advanced classes and special programs in U.S. public schools — known as the Civil Rights Data Set— released by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights.

Petal Primary School's enrollment rate for gifted and talented is 8 percent.

Dawson Elementary School, in Jackson, Miss., is a higher-poverty school than Petal Primary School, with 97 percent of its students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. The school enrolls 9 percent of students in the gifted and talented program.

These data points were reported by schools and districts to the Office for Civil Rights. For more information about the data, see our full methodology.

— Generated by Narrative Science