Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty

[Anonymous]

I have to agree with PP this is not all kids, but public school kids. What it says to me is that the upper and middle classes are abandoning public education in favor of private. That was especially likely in the south.

-No I don't think this is all teachers, but a lot of teachers do not have a belief in the growth mindset for poor kids and lapse into a social worker situation. What we do have to be more honest about though is that how much growth is going to be limited by the circumstances of poverty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We as a nation really need to confront poverty: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html?hpid=z1

Here is DC, that would mean confronting the fact that setting up of whole system of blaming teachers was wrong.

Never happen - too many adult egos at risk.

Why I can't I find friends like you? I think we would get along.

[Anonymous]

It's the result of 30 years of Republican supply-side economic theory and trickle-down policy. The rich have gotten richer, and the American middle class has been decimated. 30 years of empirical evidence shows that supply-side and trickle-down are a monumental economic failure on a national scale. It's resulted in stagnant economic growth, stagnant wages, and a whole host of other issues. That needs to change. Consumption is good, consumption drives economic activity. The more that money is changing hands, the more powerful an economy becomes. Our problem is that most of the money is being concentrated in the rarefied atmosphere of the ultra-wealthy, where it changes hands far less often, and where it touches far less of our everyday economy, which has resulted in economic stagnation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think its important to remember this is about poverty for kids enrolled in PUBLIC SCHOOLS. thats not the same as sayiing 50% of ALL kids in US live in poverty. I don't know the second number but I would assume its less than 50%. I think part of this number is a reflection of more and more parents putting their kids in private, charter and home school. bascially you are seeing a pheonomenom where parents who do have a choice, choose to leave public schools. They may also live in poverty but for whatever reason of ability, have pulled their kids out. This is so different from even when I was a kid in the 80s. I went to a mix of average to below average public shcools, my family was high income. Everyone we were friends with were upper middle income and we all went to the same public schools. I think parents now are inundated with so much information about how poverty creates a negative learning environment etc that they are trying a hell of lot harder than a generation before to get their kids out of public schools. To be fair, I am probably one of those parents. Issues my own parents probably would have ignored, I am overly concerned with. My parents never could have told you a FARMS rate or free lunch percent at any of my public schools (and my mom was a teacher). But I know that for every single choice we are looking at in D. And its very likely that we will end up in a charter.
I think this article was important but we need more information on the increase in school age kids who simply no longer in the public school system. I think for both DC and new orleans at least half of all kids are not in public schools.

Charter schools are public schools, therefore I would imagine that they are included in the 50% poverty analysis. There are plenty of FARMs children in charter. The charter movement was originally designed with them in mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did they do a study to determine whether the spike is due to undocumented immigration or if the threshold to qualify for services is lower than in the past?

Real incomes have been declining since the 70s, primarily due to deregulation of the economy. There's a ton of work on this.

Uh huh. And 40 million immigrants had nooooothing to do with it.

There isn't much evidence to suggest that immigrants have an overall negative effect on wages

http://www.nber.org/papers/w12497

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/jobs/posts/2013/08/02-immigration-wages-greenstone-looney

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14683

[Anonymous]

According to the Census Bureau the overall under-18 poverty rate is 19.9%. https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/

Assuming that they're using the same poverty rate (there are several) that would imply that public schools are not very representative of the entire population. If 100% of poor kids go to public school it means only 25% of non-poor kids do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:According to the Census Bureau the overall under-18 poverty rate is 19.9%. https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/

Assuming that they're using the same poverty rate (there are several) that would imply that public schools are not very representative of the entire population. If 100% of poor kids go to public school it means only 25% of non-poor kids do.

Looks like that's a different measure of poverty than the one in the OP's article.

FARMS-eligible is at or below 185% of "poverty."

(Which has always left me wondering why we set the "poverty" bar so low -- if your family brings in almost double that, you still need assistance buying food for your kids? Sounds like poverty to me.)

[Anonymous]

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/340532.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did they do a study to determine whether the spike is due to undocumented immigration or if the threshold to qualify for services is lower than in the past?

It has more to do withe evisceration of the middle class and growth of the wealth gap.

To which immigration and outsourcing have prominently contributed.

Undocumented workers are not as high a number as you think. Keep passing the blame to them instead of the real problem though, GOP and their keep the rich rich at any cost policies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the result of 30 years of Republican supply-side economic theory and trickle-down policy. The rich have gotten richer, and the American middle class has been decimated. 30 years of empirical evidence shows that supply-side and trickle-down are a monumental economic failure on a national scale. It's resulted in stagnant economic growth, stagnant wages, and a whole host of other issues. That needs to change. Consumption is good, consumption drives economic activity. The more that money is changing hands, the more powerful an economy becomes. Our problem is that most of the money is being concentrated in the rarefied atmosphere of the ultra-wealthy, where it changes hands far less often, and where it touches far less of our everyday economy, which has resulted in economic stagnation.

This!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The population is growing; the resources are dwindling. What did you expect?

That we should stop expanding the population via immigration and stop spending money we don't have?

If we don't continue to bring in more young people via immigration, we are going to be an elderly dominated nation with few young people to stimulate the economy and support the elderly like a couple of European nations and Japan who are in serious trouble right now. Immigration reform is important to this nation's economy. It doesn't just help immigrants.

[Anonymous]

Remember that some schools have such a high FARMS population that the whole population is eligible for FARMS. I imagine this exaggerates the percentage they are identifying as living in poverty. But not by much probably.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did they do a study to determine whether the spike is due to undocumented immigration or if the threshold to qualify for services is lower than in the past?

Real incomes have been declining since the 70s, primarily due to deregulation of the economy. There's a ton of work on this.

Uh huh. And 40 million immigrants had nooooothing to do with it.

And why have we had so immigrants from Latin America in the past few decades? Because we, the US, pushed NAFTA and other free-trade agreements that enriched our corporations but destroyed the agricultural economy in Latin America, making the drug trade the only way to make money for the uneducated peasantry, for which we, the US are the largest market, and we, the US, choose not to address the causes of addiction to lessen demand, and those poor Latin Americans who didn't want to participate in the drug trade have to flee. So yeah, if you want to stop immigration then lobby and vote for economic regulation of international trade, and reform of drug laws.

[Anonymous]

The headline at the post is a fuck up. If you read the report, 51% are eligible for free or reduced meals, which kicks in at 185% of the federal poverty level. I don't think this reality should change anyone's response as to the necessity of better supporting poor families, but I hate sloppy reporting like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The headline at the post is a fuck up. If you read the report, 51% are eligible for free or reduced meals, which kicks in at 185% of the federal poverty level. I don't think this reality should change anyone's response as to the necessity of better supporting poor families, but I hate sloppy reporting like that.

sorry to sound so stupid, but what does that mean about how many FARMS eligible kids are actually now in public schools in the US

And I would really like to know whether they considered charter schools public schools. Sloppy reporting is so right.