May 2016: School Administrator
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Editor's Note
Pervasive Poverty
In preparing this issue, I looked at some government statistics to better appreciate the immense and ever-growing responsibility borne by public educators in supporting the school-age population in this country.
Since 2000-01, the number of students eligible for free/reduced-price lunch has rocketed from 17.8 million to 24.3 million. The latter figure means 51 percent of all public school students nationwide (as of 2013) now qualify as poor, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Mississippi, at 72 percent, has the highest percentage of school-age youngsters in poverty of any state.
Like many of the subjects we choose as editorial themes, poverty in schooling lends an endless array of possible directions. I think we’ve chosen wisely in what we are offering our readers of School Administrator this month.
Elizabeth Kneebone of the Brookings Institution looks at the suburban safety net for students in poverty. Paul Gorski, founder of EdChange, tackles the sticky issue of altering educators’ attitudes. A former superintendent, Rob Smith, details how some inner-ring suburban school systems appear to be narrowing the opportunity and achievement gaps. Macke Raymond, a research director at Stanford, tells us what she has learned about the way charter schools teach children from low-income homes.
Other contributors include Bill Milliken of Communities In Schools; Kati Haycock of the Education Trust; and Kathleen Budge, co-author of Turning High-Poverty Schools into High-Performing Schools.
Jay P. Goldman
Editor, School Administrator
703-875-0745
jgoldman@aasa.org
@JPGoldman
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