In vast swaths of America, the conversion of the "public" school system into a separate and unequal educational system catering to the poor and powerless is almost complete.
A new study from the Southern Education Foundation shows that 17 US states have reached quite a notable turning point: the majority of students in their public school systems receive free lunches—which is to say, the public school systems in these states can now be properly classified as institutions that mostly serve the poor, rather than public institutions that serve a representative cross-section of society. This means that the concerns of the public school system can be more easily ignored on a statewide and region-wide level by politicians who care not for the interests of low-income people.
The states with majority-poor school systems, as seen in the map above, include almost the