Reply to s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?

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[quote=Anonymous]I think the debate on this is incredibly charged, and it's unfortunate. You can't avoid the broad correllation between test scores as a measure of school quality and income levels -- and by extension, property values. Having had a child in elementary school for a couple of years now, I understand why a little bit better now - the wealthier families at our school are the ones who provide the bulk of the support to the school in terms of both funds and volunteering. They have the resources ($, time and energy) to invest in their kids in other ways that help raise the overall academic level, whether through extracurricular activities or tutoring or simply ensuring that their kids do their homework. I'm not trying to say that less wealthy families don't ever do these things, or don't care as much about their kids, but simply that they often have other demands on their resources and other constraints. Fwiw, I think of myself as somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, although by any rational standard we are insanely wealthy ourselves (just much less so than most of the families at our child's school) -- my child's classmates from the lawyer/lobbyist families families always seem better prepared and more engaged in the school than we do.

I'm sure there are other issues as well - particularly in this area, higher numbers of low-income students tends to be associated with higher numbers of students whose first language is not English. That can pose challenges in the classroom, too.

So I don't revile FARMs kids in any way; some of my child's best friends since starting school may or may not have qualified, I think at least, and they are wonderful kids who are smart and better behaved than my own. But I also appreciate why the idea of creeping increases in the low-income population of a school may worry some parents, because they (like me) may have reason to associate a school's quality with overall income levels of the families it serves. I also think it is generally unfortunate for all concerned when schools that are predominantly white and wealthy become more so. [/quote]

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