
Majority of U.S. public school students are eligible for federal food program - Futurebot
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html
======
a_puppy
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.p...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-23/pdf/2016-06463.pdf)

~~~
hackuser
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.

~~~
danielvf
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.

~~~
lovich
Rent in boston for a family of six would be over 30k after taxes and that's
with living in ghetto. I live in a 600 sq ft home and its 21600 a year. Your
budget definitely doesn't apply across the country

~~~
flubert
You might be interested in moving to a lower cost of living location.

2960 sq. ft., $39,400, $229/mo: [http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/454-Steam-
Engine-Dr-Northf...](http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/454-Steam-Engine-Dr-
Northfork-WV-24868/2098555364_zpid/)

2,114 sq. ft., $35,000, $259/mo: [http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/63-Forest-
St-Rutland-VT-05...](http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/63-Forest-St-Rutland-
VT-05701/92019775_zpid/)

2,965 sq. ft., $47,500, $303/mo:
[http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/102-N-Main-St-Plainview-
NE...](http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/102-N-Main-St-Plainview-
NE-68769/108937163_zpid/)

2,858 sq. ft., $39,900, $264/mo: [http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/12-Spring-
St-Northumberlan...](http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/12-Spring-St-
Northumberland-NH-03582/86747520_zpid/)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
While those houses in Vermont and New Hampshire are well-appreciated, most
people living in and around Boston probably have fairly specific reasons (ie:
job, family, life history) for not moving to Nebraska or West Virginia.

"Just abandon your livelihood to go find cheaper land" is not a solution
unless your livelihood is in real-estate speculation.

~~~
flubert
Like the other article on HN today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11737232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11737232)

...I sometimes wonder if some people on HN aren't able to visualize the option
of lower-cost lifestyles because they aren't given that menu option. How many
articles are there per week about real-estate prices and rent control in big
cities, and angst about basic income, etc.. My gift to them, small as it may
be, is a window into a separate, but not so far away world.

~~~
cylinder
What do you expect people to do for a living in the middle of WV?

~~~
flubert
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hn%20who%20is%20hiring&sort=by...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hn%20who%20is%20hiring&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastYear&type=story)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hn%20remote&sort=byPopularity&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hn%20remote&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastYear&type=story)

...You could also look at it as a chance to prove how entrepreneurial you are.
Think of something to do with the excess labor that is available from the
decline in coal mining.

------
sandworm101
"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
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
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).

------
gozur88
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-
al...](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/05/when-all-kids-eat-
for-free/481806/)

~~~
mc32
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?

~~~
tropo
The kids who most need the free lunches are most likely to lose the ID. (and
books, and pencils, and...)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Lunches are so cheap (a little under $3/lunch [1]), we might as well just give
them away for free to all school age children.

For some of them, its the only real meal of the day they'll see.

[1]
[https://schoolnutrition.org/AboutSchoolMeals/SchoolMealTrend...](https://schoolnutrition.org/AboutSchoolMeals/SchoolMealTrendsStats/#5)

~~~
rayiner
We should give them breakfast and dinner too.

~~~
Spivak
Sarcasm is difficult to convey over the text so I'm not sure if you're
serious, but you should be if you aren't. Forget about morality, ethics, or
any of that think of the children bullshit, paying the cost of about
$2.50-$5/student/day is downright cheap for the returns we get down the line:
from not having to pay to fix the medical problems they acquired as kids from
malnourishment or shitty TV dinners, the welfare they wont be collecting
because their grades are better, the reduction in crime, the increase in GDP,
etc..

It's a really small thing, but it really does keep poor kids from getting
stuck on the C student/underachiever track when their parent's get a break an
don't have to worry about food.

Source: This is one of the programs the local food bank I volunteer at does
for poor families in the city.

~~~
ap3
Have you seen school food?

I have been to my kids school during lunch - so much wasted food it's
incredible.

Please dom't waste more money on that.

I can see myself voting for this only if I owned the local food company.

~~~
dctoedt
> _so much wasted food it 's incredible_

The incremental social ROI of feeding three meals is very likely to be far
greater than the cost of wasted food.

Or: Let's optimize for child-development outcomes and not for food usage.

------
twright
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
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.

------
danielvf
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
Thanks—we've edited the title above to include this correction.

------
sevenless
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.

~~~
tropo
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
How about a tax rebate for previous year when you have a child?

~~~
burfog
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.

------
bufordsharkley
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_com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland#Basic_comprehensive_education)

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/warren-
buffett-i...](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/warren-buffett-is-
right-ban-private-schools_b_1857287.html)

~~~
evanpw
1\. It looks like public spending on K-12 education in Finland is already
quite a bit less than in the United States (adjusted for PPP) [a]. Spending
more doesn't necessarily get you better results.

2\. Private school attendance in the US is: small, decreasing, and mostly
Catholic [b].

3\. The criterion for "low-income" is this article is access to free or
reduced lunches, which for a family of 4 means an income of less than $45k /
year [c]. That's pretty close to the median household income, so it makes
sense that about half of kids would be "low-income".

a. [http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-
internatio...](http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-
international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/finland-
overview/finland-system-and-school-organization/)

b.
[http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgc.asp](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgc.asp)

c.
[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-23/pdf/2016-06463.p...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-23/pdf/2016-06463.pdf)

~~~
bufordsharkley
I'm not sure I'd call 6% "small," but it is encouraging that it's shrinking.

I'd like to see more of this broken down between urban and suburban areas. For
instance, in most major cities, the percentages are far higher[0] and the
percentage of students left behind are far more likely to be poor: in Chicago,
for example, 87% of students are low-income families[1].

[0]
[http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/chicag...](http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/chicago_fed_letter/2006/cfloctober2006_231.pdf)

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/opinion/kristof-
students-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/opinion/kristof-students-
over-unions.html?ref=opinion&_r=0)

~~~
rayiner
Fun fact: In Chicago, the second largest school system is the Archdiocese of
Chicago catholic schools (which has 40k students to CPS's 400k). They spent
about half what CPS does per pupil.

~~~
tptacek
Though consider also that:

* They benefit from the enormous selection bias of "parents who take financial pains to send their kids to Catholic school".

* They have carte blanche to dismiss problematic and challenging students back to the public school system.

* They generally don't offer programs for learning disabled and behaviorally disabled students.

* They aren't obliged to honor the CPS students per classroom maximum.

* Catholic school teachers take a pay cut to serve in that system.

* They generally have poorer facilities than the Chicago public schools.

I'm a product of Chicago Catholic schools, and I was pretty amazed to see what
the local public school system offered my own kids.

~~~
rayiner
That's all true. But that raises the question of whether we should be
burdening public schools with providing all those social services in the first
place. Maybe we should be figuring out how to provide those social services in
a more systematic and formal way.

------
thedevil
Interesting note: The map looks almost like a map of average temperatures.

[http://climate.ncsu.edu/secc_edu/images/meandailytemp1961_19...](http://climate.ncsu.edu/secc_edu/images/meandailytemp1961_1990.gif)

~~~
bsamuels
i dont know if im crazy, but what map are you referring to? i dont see a map
on the article

~~~
jkyle
It's in the 'reports' link. [1]

1\. [http://www.southerneducation.org/Our-Strategies/Research-
and...](http://www.southerneducation.org/Our-Strategies/Research-and-
Publications/New-Majority-Diverse-Majority-Report-Series/A-New-
Majority-2015-Update-Low-Income-Students-Now)

------
Alex3917
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
_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
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
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
I disagree; it is affordable. Again, the richest nation in the history of the
world, by a long shot.

~~~
Houshalter
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.

------
afarrell
I wonder if public boarding schools would be a bad idea. I suppose, knowing
history, it would depend highly on the implementation.

~~~
jameskilton
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".

~~~
tropo
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.

~~~
ashark
I don't know what it's like in DC, but in my city the worst districts have to
pay quite a bit more for personnel (teachers, admin, substitutes, everyone)
and _still_ don't usually attract the best, because working in a place with
multiple violent disruptions in each classroom every week and where the 2nd
graders yell at their substitutes and call them names that 2nd graders ought
not know is frustrating and dangerous. It's way easier to feel like you're
effective and appreciated in the good districts, even if you're making 20%
less.

If DC paid the national average it's possible _no one_ would work there, not
even mediocre teachers. So yeah, there may tend to be an inverse relationship
between spending and quality, but it's (likely, in most cases) not that the
money is causing the problem but rather that the problem is forcing more
spending just to tread water, let alone improve anything.

------
tropo
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.

------
hackaflocka
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.

~~~
mjevans
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)

~~~
ChrisLomont
>I blame rampant inflation in cost and deflation in wages over time

Inflation adjusted wages are near all time highs for all quintiles [1].

[1]
[http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-...](http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-
Income-Distribution.php)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Inflation adjusted wages are near all time highs for all quintiles [1].

Nope, that's inflation adjusted _household income_.

 _Wages_ (what one gets paid per unit of work) are significantly down from the
peak in the 1970s.

[http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/commentaries/Avera...](http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/commentaries/Average-
Hourly-Wage-Trends.php)

~~~
ChrisLomont
From your own source - the peak was Jan 1978, around $22/hr, which was a small
blurb, and more significantly, before women entered the workforce in droves.
The pay at 2014 was $19.17/hr.

Since 2014, real wages have increased (see BLS data) and are still increasing.
And even the 2014 rate of $19/hr is higher than all but a few years in that
entire chart.

And wages is not the same as total remuneration, which has also increased, due
to many non-wage benefits companies have added since 1978. See the time series
"Total cost to employ" in BLS data to see that.

Finally, demographics also change - the workforce is getting younger (as
people are earlier in careers) ad boomers retire, lowering average wage while
individuals are _still_ better off. You can dig this out of census and BLS
data also.

So, how is this "rampant inflation in cost and deflation in wages over time".
It's nearly flat for a long time, and significantly better than the decades
before that.

You called it rampant inflation as well as deflation in wages. To go from $22
to $19 over almost 30 years (completely ignoring the other relevant factors)
is not a very big inflation or deflation effect whatsoever. Do the math.

~~~
dragonwriter
> From your own source - the peak was Jan 1978, around $22/hr

1973 for the broad, cross-industry peak. (1978 was the peak for wages
restricted to manufacturing.)

> which was a small blurb.

Both the broader and manufacturing measures were above their present levels at
least a decade (nearly two for the manufacturing measure you fixated on)
around their peak.

> And even the 2014 rate of $19/hr is higher than all but a few years in that
> entire chart.

Its lower than 1971-1989.

> Since 2014, real wages have increased (see BLS data) and are still
> increasing.

And then we can talk about the distribution of the recent gains... [0]

[0] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-
wor...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-
wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/)

~~~
ChrisLomont
>And then we can talk about the distribution of the recent gains

Ah, moving the goalposts. And irrelevant. The gains shown in the BLS [1] are
_median_ gains.

I just redid the data that you posted up through today (Time series CPIAUCSL
[2] and AHETPI [3] from FRED like the author did). We're less than $1/hr off
the all time high and trending upwards. We're higher today than 90% of all
months back through 1964, and within 5% of the all time high. This doesn't
seem like "rampant inflation in cost and deflation in wages over time", since
the required rate to lose 5% over nearly 40 years is less than 0.13%
compounded annually. That's miniscule. And it ignores all other factors that
actually account for a lot of the change (like people getting more returns in
the form of benefits and better regulations, which often lowers wages).

Today I learned 0.13% is "rampant inflation".

A large difference between then and now is we let minorities and women earn
significantly more money than that high, while white men are earning less.
Overall every income quintile is doing better. There is more competition for
wages, which generally drives it lower, but the data us consistent with stable
wages despite increased benefits and increased supply of labor.

There is nothing supporting your claim of "rampant inflation in cost and
deflation in wages over time".

I rest my case. We're done.

[1]
[http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm)

[2]
[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CPIAUCSL/downlo...](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CPIAUCSL/downloaddata)

[3]
[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AHETPI#](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AHETPI#)

