Best Practices For Identifying Student Poverty

Summary: There are 41 states that allocate additional resources to school districts for economically disadvantaged students to account for the unique challenges and difficulties they face. Across the board, states have struggled with correctly identifying, or at least estimating, the prevalence of student poverty within a school.

While eligibility for the federal government’s National School Lunch (NSL) program remains the most widely-used measure, it suffers from a number of issues that reduce its effectiveness in identifying the concentration of poverty.

States are thus increasingly moving towards alternative metrics or using NSL-eligibility in tandem with other criteria to more effectively allocate poverty funding. This commentary examines those approaches, their unique merits and caveats, and their implications for equitable public education funding.

Link: Best Practices For Identifying Student Poverty

Submitted June 23, 2020 at 03:51PM by punkthesystem https://ift.tt/3fRZC1X