[jbooth]

Sigh. The guy was pretty clearly talking about his schools, and definitely was not talking about the state average. The entire letter he's talking about "his" schools. The sentence you quoted might have been the only one in the whole passage that he omitted a posessive. He certainly never used the word "average"

If the state average is 9.6k, and his district is suburban, it stands to reason he'd be a fair bit under that at around 7k, esp in michigan where the cities are so f'd up. That would make total sense. Or we could just assume he's talking about something else and lying about it for no reason. Whatever.

Sorry for accusing you of fudging, I misread the stats myself and your attitude didn't generally come across as honest so I was too annoyed to double-check.

Anyways attempted gotcha nitpicking that doesn't change conclusions is way more substantive than actual education policy, I agree that this is awesome. You should work for CNN.