Giving Compass' Take:

• Urban Institute discusses a new measurement of student poverty, the challenges it has revealed, and why states need to improve this system to obtain accurate information on economically disadvantaged students. 

• What are the gaps that need to be closed when it comes to assessing student poverty? What roles do schools and educators play in making sure these kids have the assistance they need?

• Here's more on student poverty and expanded free lunch programs. 

For decades, free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) status has been used as a proxy measure for student poverty. Families filled out paper lunch forms, and these were the basis for allocating resources to schools, defining accountability goals, and conducting research. But recent changes to the National School Lunch Program mean that FRPL status is in decline as a measure of student need, and states are turning to alternatives.

The most promising of several options is “direct certification,” which links school rosters with public benefit program data to identify students from low-income families participating in programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This approach has many advantages—namely, that it reduces the burden on families and school staff previously responsible for collecting paper lunch forms and can accurately identify many economically disadvantaged students.

But direct certification can miss low-income students and families who do not or cannot take up public benefits or who cannot be easily matched across data systems, leading to undercounts in many schools and districts. States need to be thoughtful in developing their direct certification systems, or pair them with other identification strategies, before they can generate accurate counts of low-income students.

Read the full article about student poverty measurement by Erica Greenberg at Urban Institute.