Location
Room 218
Proposal Track
Research Project
Session Format
Presentation
Session Format
Presentation
Abstract
Poverty has long been known to be strongly correlated with academic achievement. In intercensal years, the National Academy of Sciences recommended using percent of free and reduced lunch (FRL) as a measure of poverty in educational systems. The Federal Government, the State of Georgia, and many other states have adopted the policy of reporting poverty levels at the school level by the percentage of students receiving free or reduced lunch. However, as we will show in this presentation, there is a severe restriction of range in the upper end of the FRL variable. This restriction in range can result in schools with ostensibly equal levels of free and reduced percentages having levels of poverty that vary to a great degree. This can result in the systemic misallocation of resources from the schools with the most need and miscalculation of value-added accountability estimates. The purpose of this study is to illustrate this phenomenon with recent pre-existing CRCT and FRL data from over 1,200 elementary schools in the State of Georgia.
Keywords
Free and reduced lunch, Poverty, Restriction of range
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Randolph, Justus and Prejean-Harris, Rose, "The Negative Consequences of Using Free and Reduced Lunch as a Measure of School-Level Poverty: A Case from the State of Georgia" (2014). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 40.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2014/2014/40
Proposal
frl_presentation.pptx (243 kB)
PowerPoint
The Negative Consequences of Using Free and Reduced Lunch as a Measure of School-Level Poverty: A Case from the State of Georgia
Room 218
Poverty has long been known to be strongly correlated with academic achievement. In intercensal years, the National Academy of Sciences recommended using percent of free and reduced lunch (FRL) as a measure of poverty in educational systems. The Federal Government, the State of Georgia, and many other states have adopted the policy of reporting poverty levels at the school level by the percentage of students receiving free or reduced lunch. However, as we will show in this presentation, there is a severe restriction of range in the upper end of the FRL variable. This restriction in range can result in schools with ostensibly equal levels of free and reduced percentages having levels of poverty that vary to a great degree. This can result in the systemic misallocation of resources from the schools with the most need and miscalculation of value-added accountability estimates. The purpose of this study is to illustrate this phenomenon with recent pre-existing CRCT and FRL data from over 1,200 elementary schools in the State of Georgia.
