What you describe is a school in a low cost area with a 42% graduation rate that compensates its teachers just as well as the best high schools in America. Even with an average teacher salary of 85K, a cost of $23,000 per student seems high by a significant amount (an average of 85K for teachers usually comes in at under $20K student/year by a fair margin). Also towns with a median income in that range usually have far better graduation rates. I'd definitely be interested in learning more about that school, because those numbers seem far different than those I have experience with.