Is your district leaving funding on the table?

This scorecard compares your district's state funding to districts that look like yours — same share of students from low-income families — using public data. Where you're claiming less than your peers, there may be funding within reach.

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District snapshot

Where there may be funding within reach

These two programs are formula-driven: districts that identify fewer eligible students than similar districts may be leaving claimable funding unused. The figures below are a starting point for a conversation, not a bill.

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Worth a look — but no dollar figure

For these programs, how students get identified varies so much from district to district that attaching a dollar amount would be misleading. We show them so you can decide whether they're worth a closer look.

How things have changed over time

Five-year trends from public state data. Useful context for understanding where your numbers are heading.

Funded students & total state funding

Your total funded student count and total state formula dollars.

Program participation over time

Share of relevant students claimed in each program, year over year.

Who your students are

Low-income, disability, English-learner, and White+Asian shares.

Enrollment vs. funded students

Headcount vs. weighted funded count. These measure different things and won't match exactly.
For your data team — the math behind the numbers

Everything above is built from a peer comparison. For each program we look at all 180 Georgia districts, fit a trend line of how participation rises with the share of low-income students, and measure how far each district sits from that line. Below are the underlying charts, the size-neutral distance score (z-score), and definitions.

Why EIP & REP get a dollar — and SpEd & Gifted don't
EIP and REP are eligibility/formula programs: under-identifying eligible students leaves capturable funding on the table, so a dollar estimate vs. peers is actionable. SpEd and Gifted identification varies so much between districts that a dollar headline would invite an argument about practice rather than a productive conversation — so those are shown directionally only.
SpEd actually has the strongest statistical fit; softening it is a deliberate communications choice.
The dollar range (conservative → peer-average)
For each program we regress every district's actual participation rate on % from low-income families across all 180 districts; the fitted line is the peer-expected rate. The top end of the range is the full gap to that line × the statewide $/funded-student; the conservative floor is the smaller gap left after a district climbs out of the bottom of the normal range. Districts that aren't outliers collapse to a ~$0 floor and show "up to $X."
Floor = top × max(0, 1 − 1/|z|). At z = −1.3 the floor is ≈ 23% of the top; at z = −2, ≈ 50%.
Z-score (the distance measure)
How far a district sits from the peer line, in standard deviations — size-neutral, so big and small districts compare fairly. We flag a program for review when z ≤ −1.0.
z = −1.2 means meaningfully below peers given demographics.
Below peers ≠ money owed
The peer line is just the average; half of districts fall below it by construction. A gap is a question to investigate — it may reflect lower need, different (compliant) identification, or local policy — not automatically lost revenue.
Treat every figure as a starting hypothesis for a conversation.
Funded students vs. enrollment
Enrollment is an October headcount; the funded count is weighted and annualized. They never match exactly — small gaps are normal.
Shown as two lines, not a ratio.
Context, not the gap
Poverty and academic-need figures are shown alongside the comparison to inform the conversation — they are not used to compute the gap, which is purely a relative-position measure.
Low-income share