Almost half of public school students qualify for food aid; rural Southern states stand out

In 2000, low-income children were a majority of public-school students in only four states: Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana and New Mexico. In 2011, that number jumped to 17, including almost every state in the rural South.

The Southern Education Foundation, the nation’s oldest education philanthropy, looked at the number of public schools' students from preschool to 12th grade who were eligible for free and reduced-price meals during the 2010-11 school year, Lyndsey Layton reports for The Washington Post. A family of four could earn no more than $40,793 per year to qualify for the program in 2011. Overall, 50 million public school students, or 48 percent of the total, qualified for food aid, Layton writes. The share was highest in Mississippi, where 71 percent qualified. A state-by-state breakdown of is available here.  (Post graphic)

Michael A. Rebell, executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University in New York, told Layton there was a link between poverty and lack of education: “When you break down the various test scores, you find the high-income kids, high-achievers, are holding their own and more. It’s when you start getting down to schools with a majority of low-income kids that you get astoundingly low scores. Our real problem regarding educational outcomes is not the U.S. overall—it’s the growing low-income population.” (Read more)

To read the full report click here.