8 ms·

Majority of U.S. public school students are eligible for federal food program

• thedevil 10y ago
  Interesting note: The map looks almost like a map of average temperatures. http://climate.ncsu.edu/secc_edu/images/meandailytemp1961_1990.gif http://climate.ncsu.edu/secc_edu/images/meandailytemp1961_19...
  • bsamuels 10y ago
    i dont know if im crazy, but what map are you referring to? i dont see a map on the article
    • jkyle 10y ago
      It's in the 'reports' link. [1] 1. http://www.southerneducation.org/Our-Strategies/Research-and-Publications/New-Majority-Diverse-Majority-Report-Series/A-New-Majority-2015-Update-Low-Income-Students-Now http://www.southerneducation.org/Our-Strategies/Research-and...
    • flubert 10y ago
      Do you have javascript turned off? There is an interactive map that looks like: http://imgur.com/30B90f8 http://imgur.com/30B90f8 ...and if you hover over a state, it displays the percent of children getting the free meals.
• afarrell 10y ago
  I wonder if public boarding schools would be a bad idea. I suppose, knowing history, it would depend highly on the implementation.
  • PretzelFisch 10y ago
    It would always be played as trying to take away poor people's children, besides who would want to pay for that?
  • logfromblammo 10y ago
    Such schools already exist for deaf and/or blind students. I have heavy doubts about whether the concept would scale well to larger numbers of students.
    • PretzelFisch 10y ago
      Those are private. The public school has to make special accommodations for a special needs student in district.
      • wavefunction 10y ago
        This is a public boarding school for the Blind or Visually Impaired: http://www.tsbvi.edu/about-tsbvi http://www.tsbvi.edu/about-tsbvi
  • jameskilton 10y ago
    Good or bad idea, it's unfortunately unrelated to the article at hand. When you're in public education, like my wife is, it's easy to see the pattern. * Public education funding gets slashed. * Reduced funding == reduced capabilities == can't meet all of the children's needs. * Wealthy families see a decline in quality public education so pay to send kids to private and charter schools. * Public schools get punished for failing to live up to arbitrary, politician-set standards, and lose more funding. It's a vicious cycle and one that we only feel the pain of many years in the future. Politicians can claim a financial win by cutting millions and even thousands from education but are actually costing this country billions in the long term. If we don't push and support free, high quality, public education, the inequality gap is can only widen. If you want an ear full, ask any educator about the "high school-to-prison pipeline".
    • PretzelFisch 10y ago
      You forgot the part where the wealthy family no longer want to pay for the public education because they don't see a benefit from it any more and force further funding cuts.
      • gedy 10y ago
        They pay the same taxes, and cannot opt out of paying for public education.
        • PretzelFisch 10y ago
          yes, so they lobby to cut public education and for voucher systems where they can use some credit towards the private school they use.
    • tropo 10y ago
      Leaving out: * We see the waste and we don't want to encourage it. * DC has a huge per-student budget, but the student performance is horrible. Clearly, budget isn't going to do the job. Perhaps there is an inverse relationship.
  • tropo 10y ago
    Things that come to mind: Lord of the Flies. Prison gangs. It would be better for some, but getting selected/admitted would become some sort of insult.
• tropo 10y ago
  No doubt many of these people are having a rough time, but poverty is relative and the number is fully determined by where you draw the line. We have a standard. Why that one? Why not the same as Sweden, Haiti, Japan, Mali, Luxembourg, or Chad? It's all political. Want to prove a point? Draw the line as required.
• bufordsharkley 10y ago
  In most major cities, affluent parents opt-out of the public schooling system and we end up with underfunded and failing schools. I'm consistently attracted to a system a la Finland: for K-12, tuition and selective admission are strictly prohibited[0]. I worry that this may seem to extreme to put into action, but it wouldn't be. Even Warren Buffet has pushed for banning private schools, and soon.[1] Any thoughts on why this may not be a good idea? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland#Basic_comprehensive_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland#Basic_com... [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/warren-buffett-is-right-ban-private-schools_b_1857287.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/warren-buffett-i...
  • sremani 10y ago
    The Rich can carve cities, the Park Cities in Dallas are a classic example, the upper middle class cannot, so any fiat effecting private schooling will screw the upper middle class and middle class, and I am not sure it gives any leg up for poor kids. One reason to move to burbs is exactly this, you are still part of public schooling but the ISD is oh so better because of various factors including stable households(relatively speaking). edit: other factor that lot of people are not discussing is immigration - most immigrants are young and by American standards poor (not necessarily by their native country standards - but American standards), so this infuses into the student body, who are children of immigrants who are starting rebuilding life in a new country.
  • pm90 10y ago
    You really can't ban things like that unless there is an agreement that it is, in General, a good idea. Keep in mind that Nordic countries have a low and very homogenous population so the solutions that work there won't always work in the US
    • bufordsharkley 10y ago
      Isn't this a bit of a tautology? It isn't a good idea because there isn't agreement that it is a good idea?
  • 10y ago
• hackaflocka 10y ago
  Maybe poverty-alleviation doesn't work. Maybe people's attitudes need to change. When people were poor 100 years ago, they didn't wait around for government handouts. They worked hard, and got out of where they were to go to places with more opportunity. That's how poverty-alleviation actually works.
  • jryan49 10y ago
    Sure, cause things haven't change at all over the past 100 years. Working hard gets you a lot less now than it used to.
  • jkyle 10y ago
    Or they starved to death. With their kids. Or they started selling themselves or their children to get by. If you go back a little further than 100 years (in the U.S. anyway). They were also relatively likely to get together a bunch of folks with guns and weapons and murder men, women, and children and take their land to make their own. I'm not sure the hutzpa of 100 and 200 years ago is exactly what we should aspire to.
    • trgn 10y ago
      It's gotten harder to be both poor and self-sufficient. There was rampant poverty in the olden days, but you could be a lot more resourceful when you were a poor farmer in the Piedmont 60 years ago, than when you're a poor service worker in suburban Atlanta today.
  • mjevans 10y ago
    That may be how it worked before, but that isn't how it works now. It is actually incredibly, mindbogglingly, difficult for someone who can't even get a job where they live -now- to relocate to someplace completely unknown with zero resources and no job even lined up. In the old days if you were willing to do something lower end there was always /some/ job you could get. That isn't the case today, and the jobs that used to pay enough for someone to get by don't. (I blame rampant inflation in cost and deflation in wages over time)
• sandworm101 10y ago
  "Schools, already under intense pressure to deliver better test results and meet more rigorous standards, face the doubly difficult task of trying to raise the achievement of poor children so that they approach the same level as their more affluent peers." This is not a story about schools. Schools see only the symptoms. This is a story about how a western country has made the conscious decision to divide itself. Services are being cut, at least those services that support the poor. Legislation is being liberalized to accommodate "growth" over development, markets over sustainability. The net result is the growing divide between rich and poor. And everyone seems OK with it. Why is this article so careful to limit itself to only public schools? They use the meals program as a proxy for poverty. Ok, but what about the number of students that have moved away from public schools in recent years? What percentage of students are now attending non-public charter schools? It isn't just the rich kids. 'Charter' /= 'private school'. But I suspect that if charter schools are included, less than 50% of US kids are "in poverty". https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=30 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=30
  • dikdik 10y ago
    Thank you. Instead of only propping up poor children, which is only treating the symptom, we need to look at our social and economic policies so parents can earn a decent wage.
    • mjevans 10y ago
      I am at least one adult that is /not/ a parent today because I do not feel like I can provide enough /stable/ resources to start a family. That is one of the two main factors in my not even being 'on the market' relationship wise (when traditionally someone like me should be).
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    > What percentage of students are now attending non-public charter schools? It isn't just the rich kids. 'Charter' /= 'private school'. Non-public charter schools are a subset of private schools. Public charter schools are a subset of public schools.
• a_puppy 10y ago
  For context, 87% of US children attend public schools. (10% attend private schools and 3% are homeschooled.) In any discussion about poverty rates, the exact definition of "in poverty" is important. This article is defining anyone who qualifies for free or reduced-price school lunches as "being in poverty". The income threshold for free or reduced-price school lunches [0] is defined as 185% of the official federal poverty line. For a three-person household, the federal poverty line is $20,160/yr, so the threshold for reduced-price meals is $37,296/yr. [0] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-23/pdf/2016-06463.pdf https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-23/pdf/2016-06463.p...
  • danielvf 10y ago
    Thanks for pointing out the fallicy of equating the lunch program with poverty! It drives me up the wall when people treat this as a 1-1 equivalent. In Charlotte, NC only 79% of students attend public school. Statewide, homeschooling has been growing at 15% per year for the last two years, and has now passed private school enrollment. Give that this is quite different than the national average, I wonder how the percentages of public school vary across the nation.
  • hackuser 10y ago
    You can be above the poverty line and still be poor. Based on the document you posted, you qualify for reduced-priced meals if your family of four lives on $44,955 per year or $865 per week. If I understand the article correctly, more than half of public school students come from families poorer than that. Wow.
    • flubert 10y ago
      Does anyone have the statistics on how many of those kids are from single-parent households?
    • danielvf 10y ago
      You can live a very comfortable life in much of the US for $44,000 a year. We spent 30K last year for a family of six, not including taxes, giving, and health insurance. And that includes materials for homeschooling, and upgrading to a minivan.
• twright 10y ago
  Being in one of the darker red states on the map in the article, it's pretty frustrating. It's a well known problem how the state ranks in the nation and the governor cuts education budgets under the pretense of reform? I only see the problem compounding. For some friends who are new teachers, they have less and less incentive to stay longer. They're under supported and know they can get much higher pay and support in other states.
  • yardie 10y ago
    Yes the classic, "whippings will continue until morale improves." Looking from the outside in you can see it will never work. And even when results don't improve politicians and administrators double down.
• gozur88 10y ago
  If I'm reading this correctly they're considering kids "in poverty" if they qualify for a free lunch. That's not the official definition of poverty by a long shot - not only can you qualify for a free lunch even if your family isn't official below the poverty line, but in some districts every child qualifies for a free lunch because they don't want the poor kids to feel singled out. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/05/when-all-kids-eat-for-free/481806/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/05/when-al...
  • mc32 10y ago
    Instead of giving all kids free lunches, why not just have everyone scan/swipe their ID, those of means get charged, those who qualify either don't get charged or the tally gets cleaned at the end of the year?
    • protomyth 10y ago
      Because the equipment / procedures cost more than just giving everyone lunches. Also, the people with means are probably the ones paying the majority of the school's taxes so they might as well give their kids lunch too.
      • gohrt 10y ago
        non-parents pay taxes too, so your proposal does shift more of the burden from students (even wealthy students) to general population.
        • protomyth 10y ago
          "non-parents pay taxes too" - yep, all taxpayers pay for education. Its not my "proposal". Its how I have heard some school districts talk about their school lunch programs. I'm answering a question not advocating some opinion.
    • tropo 10y ago
      The kids who most need the free lunches are most likely to lose the ID. (and books, and pencils, and...)
• sevenless 10y ago
  This problem is directly connected to the true nature of the "wage gap". Women make less than men, not because they're paid less for the same work, but as a result of restricted career choices shaped by having and raising children. Where the wage gap shrinks, so does fertility. Wealthy, educated women are not going to have many kids, because it doesn't pay. We need to recognize that raising children is vital but largely unpaid work and that this is unfair to women. Raising the next generation is a section of our economy that's not even recognized as productive labor even though everything else depends on it. A stable society needs educated people to have kids. If you want middle-class women to have children you'd better start paying them for it like any other career.
  • goldbrick 10y ago
    Every thing you said was like a wild logical leap, my neck hurts from reading this.
  • tropo 10y ago
    This is very true, but awkward to implement. What do you propose? We could pay women. Take the number of years the woman had in school, minus ten. She gets that many $thousand per year per child. One could ignore negative numbers... or not. If this takes the place of child support, educated men might be more willing to risk becoming fathers. For tax purposes, we could divide a person's income by the number of family members. If you earn $123,000 and have 8 kids, we use $12,300 to determine your tax bracket. There are lots of ways to do this... and there will be lots of objections from those who would be better off with the current situation.
    • gedy 10y ago
      How about a tax rebate for previous year when you have a child?
      • burfog 10y ago
        Unless it were huge, and scaled with income, it really wouldn't change things for the educated. Educated people earning 6 figures and getting taxed 5 figures are too smart to get excited about a 4-figure payment for roughly 22 years of supporting a child to a high standard. Ignoring interest and inflation, a lump sum of $8800 to cover 22 years is only $400 per year. That's pocket change for the educated. Make it a $million to be serious.
• danielvf 10y ago
  The headline is wrong. Half of public school students are not below the poverty line. The article states that 51% of students are now eligible for the federal food program. However you become eligibile at an income of 185% of the US poverty line, not the actual proverty line itself. Secondly, access to that program has been increasing for the last several years, making it even less of an accurate historical indicatior of increasing poverty.
  • dang 10y ago
    Thanks—we've edited the title above to include this correction.
• Alex3917 10y ago
  What's even more interesting is that school districts are very quickly becoming more ghettoized; the percent of school districts with less than 10% of students on frpl is increasing, and the percent of districts with more than 90% on frpl is also increasing.
• stcredzero 10y ago
  Government used to be a source of leadership and innovation around issues of economic prosperity and upward mobility. Now we’re a country disinclined to invest in our young people. Our society is corrupt, but not quite in the way many of the loudest activists proclaim. There is quite a stark cultural disconnect between groups and between socioeconomic levels in this country. The media comprises a middle class that's starkly disconnected from the lower classes. (It's also starkly ignorant of science.) Teachers also comprise a weird in-between social class.
• hackuser 10y ago
  The United States is the richest country in the history of the world, and there is no competition. Second place is the U.S. last year; third place is either the U.S. in 2014 or 2007 ... The debate should be long over. Every person in the U.S. should have, 1) Food 2) Shelter 3) Education 4) Health care The country can easily afford it. To leave people suffering for whatever political ideology or greed or other rationalization is absurd. It's time to stop wasting resources debating it and juggling the consequences, and time for the world's wealthiest nation to start delivering to its citizens.
  • Houshalter 10y ago
    But we are giving them free lunches and education. The poor get lots of subsidies in the US. I ideally would like a basic income, but it currently isn't affordable.
    • hackuser 10y ago
      I disagree; it is affordable. Again, the richest nation in the history of the world, by a long shot.
      • Houshalter 10y ago
        I remember someone did a calculation of how much basic income we could have if we taxed corporate profits at 100%. And it would be like $6000 person. Which is not that much.
    • flubert 10y ago
      I can't help but think of: "...takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle."
  • gohrt 10y ago
    richest per capita? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...