Students in a second grade classroom at Arcola Elementary School in Arcola, Illinois. Eastern Illinois University/Creative Commons
WASHINGTON — Startling new research shows that 51 percent of students in American public schools came from low-income families as of 2013, a growth of nearly 25 percent over the previous 30 years.
The numbers, compiled by the Southern Education Foundation, a nonprofit education foundation in Atlanta, were released amid renewed debates over the No Child Left Behind law and the future of the federal government’s role in education.
While President Barack Obama is expected to call for $1 billion in increased spending for low-income students in his 2016 budget proposal, he will face challenges from congressional Republicans increasingly calling for the federal government to reduce its role in American education.
Students from low-income backgrounds typically enter the public school system facing a range of challenges that their wealthier counterparts don’t face. Teachers must often serve as more than educators for their students, ensuring that basic welfare needs such as proper clothing, healthy food and shelter are met before classwork can even begin.
“Poor children start school at a disadvantage,” said Julia Isaacs in a 2012 Brookings Institution study of school readiness. “Their health, behaviors, and skills make them less prepared for kindergarten than children growing up under better economic conditions.”
Low-income students are also significantly less likely to have access to pre-k education, leaving them less socially and academically prepared to begin kindergarten without facing difficulties.
“A lot of what preschoolers are exposed to is just classroom routines,” said Hyesook Chung, executive director of D.C. Action For Children, a nonprofit that serves children in poverty in the Washington area. “A lot of kids who don’t have exposure to those things before entering kindergarten have a hard time just functioning in the classroom.”
Meanwhile, middle and upper income Americans are more likely to send their students to private schools with tuition requirements. The U.S. Department of Education projects that 4.9 million American students will attend private schools in 2015, constituting approximately 9 percent of all students.
Research suggests that students from poor families are often unable to make gains to catch up to their richer peers throughout their educational experience. A 2011 Stanford University study found that testing achievement gap between low-income and affluent students has grown almost 40 percent since 1967.
And these socioeconomic gaps persist even as low-income students enter college. In 2011, researchers from the University of Michigan found that high-income students were significantly more likely to complete their degrees, leaving many poor students unable to compete in the job market with their wealthier, college-educated peers.
According to the Southern Education Foundation study, which came out on Jan. 16, the South was the region with the highest concentration of low-income students in public schools. All 15 Southern states had a majority of low-income students, with an average of 57 percent of students being considered low-income. Mississippi had the highest rate of low-income students by state, with 71 percent.
Twenty-one states total had a majority of low-income students in their schools. Only North Dakota and New Hampshire had less than one-third of students from were low-income families in public education.
Students are considered low-income if they qualify for free or reduced-price school lunch, which covers families up to 185 percent of the poverty line. That number stands at $44,123 for a family of four.
With public schools in America long considered an important equalizing opportunity for poorer Americans to catch up to their wealthier classmates, the study’s findings are an indicator that the education system isn’t doing enough to help those in need.
The long-term economic implications for the U.S. are troubling and suggest that the U.S. system may be ill equipped to help combat growing wealth disparities. With U.S. income inequality rising to levels not seen since the 1920s, improving education for America’s poorest citizens will be important in addressing this challenge.
“We have not moved the needle for kids in the lowest income bracket,” said Hyesook Chung. “Rich students get richer and the poor go deeper into poverty, and that is alarming.”
