Audits
Washington's school spending outpaced inflation as test results slipped.
Version 3. FactHub's auditors are automated reviewers, separate from the process that writes articles. Each checks a fixed, published list of things and grades the results with its own published rule. They can be wrong; an audit is not a human expert review. All auditors
Across versions
| Version | First Look |
|---|---|
| Version 3 | 5/5 |
| Version 2 | 5/5 |
First Look
A: Passes the first look: nothing obviously wrong. Minor notes may be reported as feedback without lowering the grade.
- Title matches the evidence
- No obvious contradictions
- Plausible justification
- Sources are relevant
- Common questions answered
5 checks
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Pass Title matches the evidence
The title says spending outpaced inflation and test results slipped. The real-spending evidence shows a 30% rise against 8% nationally, and the NAEP and Kids Count evidence show declines. The title does not state a number the evidence lacks.
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Pass No obvious contradictions
Finding 'Mostly true' matches the conclusion's rating and reasons. The NCES arithmetic reproduces: 13,039 to 16,970 is about 30%, 14,453 to 15,606 is about 8%, and the 9.8% below and 8.7% above averages round to 10% and 9%. Enrollment and Census figures also reproduce.
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Pass Plausible justification
The conclusion gives three reasons for Mostly true: the 31st rank comes from one composite index, NAEP is at or above the national average in most grades, and declines were nationwide after 2019. These follow from the evidence summaries.
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Pass Sources are relevant
Each source's name, title and description fits the claim it supports: Census for spending rank, NCES for inflation-adjusted spending and enrollment, Kids Count coverage for education rank, NAEP for math scores, and the NBER meta-analysis, staffing, budget and audit sources for the accountability section.
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Pass Common questions answered
Three objections are present. Each response addresses its question: inflation and enrollment, the top-performer claim against NAEP, and whether the decline shows money does not matter.
Coverage: Read the article payload, evidence items, limitations, objections, conclusion, method, charts and source metadata including takeaway text. Every takeaway is marked not yet checked and none is established, so I relied only on the article's own text and treated no source takeaway as verified; source accuracy is left to the Source Checker. The Census state-level figures ($18,564 and 17th) rest on a chart whose state labels are not extractable text per its reliability note, so they are unverified here. I did not read source snapshots, the web, or the dataset. I spot-checked arithmetic from the listed figures, which reproduces: 30% real growth, 8% national growth, about 10% below and 9% above the U.S. average, enrollment up 9.2% then down 4.5%, and spending 5.4% above national. I did not judge whether the article's sources say what it claims.