While demographics matter, they don’t always predict a school’s performance. For example, take one school that serves a community where the median income approaches $90,000¹, creating a strong tax base that bolsters education. The other school, just a few hundred miles away, averages more than 50 percent free-and-reduced-lunch enrollment and sometimes augments its budget with Box Tops for Education fundraisers. Despite the two schools serving dissimilar communities, both are thriving academically and routinely appear on their states’ lists of most-desired schools.