Giving Compass' Take:

• Thurston Domina, an education professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, conducted a study showing that families applying for free or reduced-price meals for their children vary greatly by income. 

• Some families that are considered low-income are not applying for reduced-price meals and some families considered higher income are applying for it, making the data less useful to understanding student poverty. 

• Read about the benefits of "community eligibility", meaning free lunches for the entire school. 

Three years ago, the Grants Pass School District 7 in southern Oregon chose to take advantage of the National School Lunch Program’s Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows schools serving low-income students to provide free meals to everyone and stop asking families to complete applications for free or reduced-price meals (FRPL).

CEP certification uses other data on families that receive government assistance, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Officials saw immediate benefits — particularly at the high school level, where students often don’t sign up for subsidized meals.

But as more schools become CEP certified, FRPL is becoming an even less-reliable way to determine the poverty level of a school — and to make decisions about which schools receive specific services or staffing. Researchers also typically use FRPL in their evaluations of the impact of specific academic interventions.

A recent study led by Thurston Domina, an education professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, details the problems with using FRPL to gauge which schools have the greatest needs. The results showed that there was “substantial variation” in family income within the same eligibility category, and that it was most obvious among those who don’t enroll in FRPL. In the California district, for instance, 13% of the students not signed up for FRPL appeared to be eligible based on their families' federal tax records.

In addition, the study “demonstrates that many students from very low-income families do not enroll in the FRPL, and many students whose family incomes are relatively high do enroll,” Domina said. “So the paper indicates that the measurement problems associated with FRPL are far worse than I'd previously imagined.”

Read the full article about reduced price meal data by Linda Jacobson at Education Dive