IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/chinre/v10y2017i2d10.1007_s12187-016-9391-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Negative Consequences of Using Percent of Free and Reduced Lunch as a Measure of Poverty in Schools: the Case of the State of Georgia

Author

Listed:
  • Justus J. Randolph

    (Mercer University)

  • Rose Prejean-Harris

    (Gainesville Middle School)

Abstract

Poverty has long been known to be strongly correlated with academic achievement. The Federal Government, the State of Georgia, and many other states have adopted the policy of reporting school-level poverty by the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced price lunch. However, as we show in this article, there is a severe restriction of range in the upper end of the free and reduced price lunch variable. The result is that when free and reduced price lunch is used as a proxy for poverty, the restriction in range can cause schools with students whose families tend to be just below the poverty threshold to ostensibly have the same level of poverty as schools with students whose families tend to be extremely poor. This can result in the systemic misallocation of resources from the schools with the most need and the miscalculation of value-added accountability estimates. The purpose of this study is to illustrate this phenomenon with recent pre-existing academic achievement and free and reduced price lunch data from over 1200 elementary schools in the State of Georgia.

Suggested Citation

  • Justus J. Randolph & Rose Prejean-Harris, 2017. "The Negative Consequences of Using Percent of Free and Reduced Lunch as a Measure of Poverty in Schools: the Case of the State of Georgia," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 10(2), pages 461-471, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:chinre:v:10:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s12187-016-9391-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s12187-016-9391-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-016-9391-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s12187-016-9391-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:chinre:v:10:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s12187-016-9391-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.