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Race Equity Trends > Education

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Students Attending High Poverty Schools by Race/Ethnicity

Students of color are more likely to attend a high poverty school in Lincoln

In the 2022-2023 school year, students of color in Lincoln were more likely to attend high poverty schools, as defined by greater than 75% participation in the free or reduced-price lunch program at a school.1 Research illustrates multiple economic and historical factors, such as redlining, continue to segregate schools by race and family wealth creating inequitable school academic opportunities. 2,3,4,5

Research finds clear evidence that segregation by average school poverty rates “is consistently the single most powerful correlate of achievement gaps” between White and Black students. This suggests that strategies to reduce school segregation by poverty may lead to meaningful reductions in academic achievement gaps.6

Concentration of poverty has also been found to limit economic mobility. Economic connectedness7 is a measure of cross-class interaction that measures the share of high-income friends among low-income people. It is found to be a strong predictor of upward mobility.7 Children who grow up in communities with more cross-class interactions are much more likely to rise out of poverty as adults.8,9

  • 36% of students who identified as White attend a mid-high or high poverty school.
  • 51.3% of students who identified as Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander attend a mid-high or high poverty school.
  • 53.2% of students who identified as Asian attend a mid-high or high poverty school.
  • 64.9% of students who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native attend a mid-high or high poverty school.
  • 68.3% of students who identified as Latino/a or Hispanic attend a mid-high or high poverty school.
  • 71.6% of students who identified as Black or African American attend a mid-high or high poverty school.
  • 53.0% of students who identified as Two or More Races attend a mid-high or high poverty school.
Notes

Lincoln Public Schools. (2022). 2022-23 Annual Statistical Handbook, Student Section. https://home.lps.org/assessment/stats

Mid-high poverty schools are those in which 50.1% to 75% of students participate in the free or reduced-price lunch program. High poverty schools are those in which greater than 75% of students participate in the free or reduced-price lunch program.

Footnotes
  1. National Center for Education Statistics. (2023). Concentration of Public School Students Eligible for Free or Reduced-Price Lunch. Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences., from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/clb.
  2. Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2006). Race matters: How race affects education opportunities. https://assets.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf-racemattersEDUCATION-2006.pdf
  3. Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law : a forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company.
  4. Hernandez, D. J. (2011). Double jeopardy: How third-grade reading skills and poverty influence high school graduation. Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation.
  5. Ladd, Helen F. (2012). Presidential Address: Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 31(2)207-227.
  6. Reardon, S. (2016). School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(5), 34–57.
  7. Chetty, R, et al. (2022). Social Capital and Economic Mobility. Opportunity Insights. https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/socialcapital_nontech.pdf
  8. Chetty, Raj, et al. (2022a). Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility. Nature, 608(7921), 108−121.
  9. Putnam, R. D. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (Simon and Schuster, 2016).