Low-income students — those eligible for free or reduced lunches — now comprise the majority of public school students in the South, and about half of North Carolina’s public school students fall under that category, according to a recent study.
The study, conducted by the Southern Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for disadvantaged students, examined the rise of majority low-income public school students in various regions of the country. Low-income students comprise 53 percent in schools in the South, 40 percent in the Northeast and 48 percent nationwide.
The study confirms that students from low-income households tend to underperform peers from higher-income households academically.
Steve Suitts, the study’s author and vice president of the Southern Education Foundation, said this low-income majority occurs across rural, urban and even some suburban areas.
“We all generally know that suburban communities have a higher income than do other areas of the state. It’s where most of the upper middle class generally moves to,” Suitts said. “That nearly half of all suburban students are also low-income is probably quite surprising.”
Three-quarters of school districts in North Carolina are majority low-income, he said.
Graig Meyer, the director of student equity and volunteer services for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools who was recently appointed to the N.C. House of Representatives, said this trend needs to be addressed by the N.C. General Assembly in order to continue to allow for social mobility through education.
“It is a priority for me for us to adequately fund our public schools, teachers and public school educators so that education remains the No. 1 way for students to move out of poverty,” Meyer said.
But Terry Stoops, director of education studies for the right-leaning John Locke Foundation, said additional funding is not necessarily the answer.
