How a federal free meal program affected school poverty stats
“As in Missouri, the most recent federal data shows that the new community eligibility program is having a modest impact on how we count low-income students nationally. Participation in the school lunch program has remained a flat 52 percent of all U.S. students from 2013-14 before the community eligibility option went into effect nationwide through 2015-16, its second year. During the same period, the U.S. economy was growing so one might have expected the number of students in the lunch program to have fallen as families’ incomes improved.”