No surprise, in des moines all schools in the area get the same funding per student. This includes inner city schools, suburbs, and rural schools. Yet there is still a large difference in results with the inner city schools doing worse than the suburbs by far.
Either it is cities elect different people to school boards (seems unlikely but I can't prove it), or family background makes the biggest difference. Many others have pointed out family background as the key, I tentend to believe it.
My kid's HS has teetered on the edge of Title 1 status over the years but lately has trended better. The top 10% of kids have upper middle class backgrounds and a stable home life. They tend to have exceptional outcomes. The bottom 40% of kids come from families living near the poverty line. They tend to get shuffled along until they barely graduate or dropout.
The middle 50% have outcomes that are all over the place but tend to correlate with parental involvement and who the kids pair off with in their friends groups. Some get pulled upward to exceed expected outcomes and some get pulled towards the bottom. It's been fascinating to see how different two kids from very similar backgrounds can end up based on the randomness of who they sat with at lunch one day 4 years ago or who was assigned to be their lab partner in 10th grade.
Either it is cities elect different people to school boards (seems unlikely but I can't prove it), or family background makes the biggest difference. Many others have pointed out family background as the key, I tentend to believe it.