The Richest Nation in the World Has the Highest Child Poverty Rate: What’s Wrong with this Picture?
And Why Aren’t We More Ashamed?
The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) recently released a report entitled A New Majority: Low Income Students in the South and the Nation that reveals low income children are a majority of students in 17 states, primarily in the South and West. Across the nation low income students are a near majority at 48 percent. A separate report Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card analyses the education funding systems in these states and reveals that serious funding inequities continue to exist years after court cases across the nation have required states to reform their funding systems to alleviate such discrepancies.Among the findings uncovered in the two reports include the following:
- Over the past decade, the number of low income students has grown at a rate of three to four times greater than the growth in per pupil expenditures in three of the four regions of the country
- Achievement scores for both high and low income students have increased; however, huge gaps still remain between these two student groups
- Within the next few years, it is likely that low income students will become the majority of all public school children in the United States