The 4700-student Scarsdale, N.Y. district, in a community with a median household income of $238,000, topped a list of the wealthiest school districts in the country, as compiled by the website 24/7 Wall Street.
The website used census data from 2006 to 2010 to develop its list. All of the top 10 wealthiest school districts are commuter communities of New York City, except for the Riverdale district, a tiny school system of about 600 students in suburban Portland, Ore.
Not surprisingly, these wealthy districts also have high graduation rates and test scores. As 24/7 Wall Street notes, all of the richest school districts were included in the 2012 U.S. News & World Report Best High Schools list, except for the Bronxville, N.Y. district, which had a high school that garnered a different honor—Newsweek‘s Top 20 High Schools in the Northeast.
But while affluence seems to be concentrated, poverty is scattered: the top 10 poorest districts were located in Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas. Garnering the top “honor” for poorest district was the 700-student Barbourville school district in Kentucky, where the median household income is about $16,600 a year. While Scarsdale is able to spend more than $26,000 on each of its students, Barbourville spent about $8,000. The Kentucky district’s high school still earned an honor from U.S. News for having test scores above state averages, however.
The full article on richest and poorest districts, which was released earlier this week, can be found here.