Rising Levels of Poverty in American Public School Children – And Another Target for Conservatives to Cut Aid

That’s Only Fair – Conservatives Are the Major Cause of the Problem

Listen to conservative activists and their message is that the United States is the greatest country on earth, and would be even greater if only that awful federal government would go away.  Listen to the facts and one gets a different picture.

Children from those low-income families dominated classrooms in 13 states in the South and the four Western states with the largest populations in 2011, researchers found. A decade earlier, just four states reported poor children as a majority of the student population in their public schools.

But by 2011, almost half of the nation’s 50 million public-school students — 48 percent — qualified for free or reduced-price meals.

Gosh, the South, huh.  The South has been the great economic success, just not for everyone, in fact just not for a large proportion of its population.  For example there is Mississippi.

In some states, such as Mississippi, that proportion rose as high as 71 percent.

And in what region of the country have conservatives been dominant, have conservatives been in total control of state government?  If you guessed the south congratulations, your children may be eligible for free school lunches because of extensive poverty.

Oh, and what southern/border states do not have a large portion of their students qualifying for free school lunches?

Maryland and Virginia were the only Southern states where low-income children did not make up a majority of public-school students. About one-third of students in public schools in Maryland and Virginia qualified for the free and reduced meals program in 2011.

And what is it about Maryland and Virginia that make them different?  Oh, the large economic impact of the federal government.  You know, the one that according to conservatives causes poverty and misery.