Labels on your project page and school page will indicate if you teach at an Historically Underfunded School.
If you have a live project, you'll see a purple label (outlined in yellow below) indicating its Historically Underfunded status:
You can also tell if you teach at a Historically Underfunded School by looking at your school page:
- If you're a teacher, on the right-hand side of your dashboard, under Tools & Resources, you’ll see a link to your school page
- If you're a donor, head to https://www.donorschoose.org/schools and find the school you're looking for via state and district
If your school is a Historically Underfunded School, this will be indicated in the "About this school" section (see yellow box below).
How we determine if your school is a Historically Underfunded School
We define Historically Underfunded Schools as schools that include any of the following:
- At least 50% of students are Black, Latino, Native American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or multiracial
- At least 50% of the students qualify for free or reduced priced lunch
- At least 75% of students are students of color (Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or multiracial) and the same race
- Rural schools where more than one third (34+%) of the students are eligible for free and reduced priced lunch
We determine the above by receiving information regarding:
- Your school’s economic need level from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) via our data partner, MDR Education. Check out more information about your school’s economic need level in our Help Center.
- Your student population’s racial demographics from MDR Education.
Updating your school’s Historically Underfunded status
If you think your school’s Historically Underfunded definition on our site may not be accurate, please review how we define a school's economic need before reaching out to us. If you still see an inaccuracy, or believe our data on student racial demographics is incorrect in the DonorsChoose database, please contact our team and provide us with either an official school report card/government website review of your school’s racial demographic, or ask your principal/director to email us providing updated demographics.