US / 48 percent of all public school children came from homes with incomes low enough to earn those students free or reduced lunches

A new study by the Southern Education Foundation has revealed that the number of low income students enrolled in schools across the United States has surged in recent years to new astronomical numbers.

According to the study, 17 of the 50 states in the country can say that at least half of their students come from households with incomes at or below the poverty line.

The results of the foundation’s research suggest schoolchildren in large parts of the US are coming from less-fortunate backgrounds at numbers not seen in decades. The last time a majority of children in public schools in the South and West placed under or at the poverty line, pollsters determined, occurred in the 1960s.

In Mississippi, 71 percent of public schoolchildren placed into the low income category. New Mexico and Louisiana rounded out the top-three states with regards to low income majorities, and the 17 locales listed with as having more than half of their students included states such as Florida and California, with 56 and 54 percent of its public school students, respectively, considered low income.

Taking into account the whole US, the foundation said 48 percent of all public school children came from homes with incomes low enough to earn those students free or reduced lunches.  They based their data on statistics pertaining to the number of children in grade preschool through 12 who were eligible for the federal meals program in the 2010-11 school year.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Public school children living in poverty across US in highest numbers since 1960s — RT USA.