ProPublica

Journalism in the Public Interest

Is Your State Providing Equal Access to Education?

This database was last updated in January 2013 and should only be used as a historical snapshot of data from the 2009-10 school year. For more recent data on public and charter schools, check out Miseducation.

ProPublica analyzed federal education data from the 2009-2010 school year to examine whether states provide high-poverty schools equal access to advanced courses and special programs that researchers say will help them later in life. This is the first nationwide picture of exactly which courses are being taken at which schools and districts across the country. More than three-quarters of all public school children are represented. Read our story and our methodology.

Find a school

Rosspoint Elementary School

132 HWY 522, BAXTER, KY., 40806 | Grades K-8

Districts with 3,000 or more students
Students Total Teachers Inexp. Teachers
This School
360
25
8%
District 4,050 249 7%
State 495K 30,276 11%
 
State Average
 
District Average

Percentage of relevant students who...

Get Free/Reduced Price Lunch

50%
72%

60%

Are in a Gifted/Talented Program

15%
16%

19%

Are

0%
0%

0% Am Indian
1%
0%

0% Asian
13%
2%

0% Black
4%
0%

0% Hispanic
81%
97%

99% White

Rosspoint Elementary School, part of the Harlan County district, is located in Baxter, Kentucky. The school reports enrolling 360 students in grades kindergarten through eight, and it has 25 teachers on staff.

Rosspoint Elementary School is above the state average but below the district average in terms of the percentage of its students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. On average, 50 percent of students in Kentucky qualify for free or reduced-price lunch programs, whereas 60 percent of Rosspoint Elementary School students do. At the district level, 72 percent of students qualify.

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.

Rosspoint Elementary School's enrollment rate for gifted and talented is 19 percent.

Beckham Bates Elementary School, in Whitesburg, Ky., is a higher-poverty school than Rosspoint Elementary School, with 88 percent of its students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. The school enrolls 10 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