Public education’s biggest problem keeps getting worse:

Public education’s biggest problem keeps getting worse

• BY VALERIE STRAUSS

• October 17 at 11:15 am

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Public education’s biggest problem just keeps getting worse.

No, it’s not “bad” teachers or “bad” students or “bad”
parents or “bad” principals.

It’s this, from this story by my colleague Lyndsey Layton:

A majority of students in public schools throughout the American South and West are low-income for the first time in at least four decades, according to a new study that details a demographic shift with broad implications for the country.

The analysis by the Southern Education Foundation, the nation’s oldest education philanthropy, is based on the number of students from preschool through 12th grade who were eligible for the federal free and reduced-price meals program in the 2010-11 school year. …

Children from those low-income families dominated classrooms in 13 states in the South and the four Western states with the largest populations in 2011, researchers found. A decade earlier, just four states reported poor children as a majority of the student population in their public schools. [see graph below]