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.

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.

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.

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?

Incomes still haven;t recovered after the recession, although they are on their way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/us/politics/census-report-poverty-income.html

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.

no I think it has to do with poorer people having more kids and richer people having less (or none). Wealth just isn't handed down as much because the wealthy don't have as many kids to divide it.

This is a remarkable oversimplification of the causes of the wealth gap.

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

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.

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.

no I think it has to do with poorer people having more kids and richer people having less (or none). Wealth just isn't handed down as much because the wealthy don't have as many kids to divide it.

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.

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's a good question- it would be good if the article focused more on WHY the spike.

Well, if there is no such thing as IQ, and it's all a blank slate, and anyone can be taught anything, who else ya gonna blame but the teachers when they fail to teach?

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.

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?

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