No Longer Counting Who's Poor in School

US News & World Report ^ | May 4, 2015 | by Jill Barshay

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Social justice looms large for many, if not most, education journalists. We care about the often substandard education of low-income children and the gap between the haves and have-nots. Take a look at the winners of the Education Writers Association awards on April 20, 2015. Most were writers who told the stories of students in poverty.

Beginning this school year and going forward, measuring and describing that poverty is about to get much muddier. That’s because the main statistic used to determine poverty in a school – the number of students who receive free or reduced-priced lunches – is starting to get diluted. According to new rules that went into effect this 2014-15 school year, a school can provide free meals to all students if certain minimum thresholds are met. They no longer have to count exactly how many students are poor. And no other statistic that measures school poverty is as readily available.

The consequences will be enormous to others besides journalists. Education researchers often look at whether an instructional technique works as well with low-income students as it does high-income students, for example. Without reliable poverty figures for each school, that kind of analysis will be inaccurate.

[oh8eleven]

the number of students who receive free or reduced-priced lunches – is starting to get diluted.
Starting? Been going on for years. The excuse reason is usually given as - we don't want the poooor children to be embarrassed.

[Vigilanteman]

Lots of ink spilt about speculating causes of poverty and poor performance in school and not one word about the most obvious- factor- the decline of intact families.

A decline hastened, in large part, by the Liberal war on intact families and the educrat unions which supply so many foot soldiers in this war.

[RightGeek]

How about counting all the reductions in food stamps because the kids are getting free meals? Oh wait.

[hanamizu]

Schools get rewarded for signing kids up for free/reduced lunches. The school I taught at had a contest with prizes for kids who returned the free/reduced lunch applications.

[Red Badger]

Tax the rich,
Feed the Poor,
Until there are no
Rich no more.....................

[dp0622]

how about wt@!? eat at home for God’s sake. Feed your kids!!! This is like Nazi Germany taking over every aspect of a kids life.
wonder how much food industry is lobbying for this.
welfare, section eight, snap, and on and on and on.
it has to be stopped!!!
didn’t they crush it In Maine because no one on it wanted to work 20 hours a week to get their money??? doesn’t that tell us something.

[TontoKowalski]

Ha Ha! In many schools, the free breakfast and lunch programs are extended into the summer. Yep, free school lunches, even when schools aren't in session.

BTW, the author of this article is behind the times. The term is "economically disadvantaged (ED)" not "poor."

When I taught, "economically disadvantaged" was a sub-group gap that I was responsible for eliminating. However, since ED students were identified by free lunch, I wasn't able to know who they were.

So, part of my job performance was to specifically directed to work extra hours for these kids, plan remediation activities, etc.... but I wasn't allowed to know who the students were.

To be honest, it didn't much matter. I taught every class the same, and I worked extra hours and planned activities for any student who needed it.

At the end of the year, my students end-of-year scores shot up dramatically. My ED sub-group beat the state average for ALL students... but we were still on the State's hit-list because the other kids also experienced dramatic gains, so the gap still existed.

A viable fix was to have the non-ED kids score lower intentionally, so they wouldn't outshine the ED kids.

I quit classroom teaching shortly after that.

[BitWielder1]

It depends on who is President, whether numbers like these are published or not.
It's not to avoid embarrassing the kids, it's about not embarrassing 0bama.

[oh8eleven]

how about wt@!? eat at home for God’s sake. Feed your kids!!!
It's not just food either. I live in western NY where the winters are brutal.
Every November, the city of Rochester has a winter jacket give-away program because there a lot of irresponsible morons who would send their kids to school in zero degree weather w/o a jacket.

[dp0622]

What do we as Christian Americans do? our country is being robbed by blacks and white trash and peurto Ricans who have kids at 14!!!! grandmas at 30!!!
they have no money except welfare.
how can we let the kids not starve or go cold?
the answer I think Is to take care of the ones already born an inflict VERY STRINGENT rules on the future of welfare and young motherhood so they know they won be taken care of .
Have a kid under 16? the state takes it. End of story.

[Steve_Seattle]

"According to new rules that went into effect this 2014-15 school year, a school can provide free meals to all students if certain minimum thresholds are met. They no longer have to count exactly how many students are poor."

But shouldn't the number of poor students be declining? After all, the media keep telling us how strong the economy is getting under Obama's brilliant leadership. /sarc

[Steve_Seattle]

"Education researchers often look at whether an instructional technique works as well with low-income students as it does high-income students . . . "

It is unlikely that ANY education technique - applied equally to low and high income students - will erase the benefits of being in a high income family.

[reviled downesdad]

When I was kid my Mom would have us walk or ride our bikes to the local public school and get the government cheese sandwich for lunch in the summer.

Now I am school board member and the liberals view it as it’s a child’s right to eat and the government must supply all kids lunch. They recently forgave over $10K worth of lunch debt.