Several of my colleagues made this video to try to explain the “comparability loophole” in Title I federal funding for schools for poor kids:
http://www.americanprogress.org/images/rd2/flash/flowplayer.commercial-3.0.5.swf
To try to explain it in words, the basic issue here is that the provision of the law designed to make sure that high-poverty schools get a fair share of resources lets you define a large share of this in terms of the number of teachers rather than the per student budget. This is like saying the Yankees and the Royals have the same resources because they both field a complete roster of baseball players, completely ignoring the fact that the Yankees are actually spending 3–4 times as much money. In education, just like in baseball, simply having more money doesn’t guarantee results — you need to spend that money effectively. But in both fields, it’s easier to spend money effectively if you have money to spend.
Congress needs to fix this.