Data Update: Free and Reduced Price Lunch and Majority Minority Schools

Copyright

2017

Published Date

04/26/2017

Published By

Community Commons

The National Center for Education Statistics released updates for two highly-utilized data sets at the beginning of 2017. The Commons has incorporated them and they are now available to map alone or alongside other data.

Free and Reduced Price Lunch by School

Free lunch and reduced lunch are actually two separate data sets married together to form the more robust “free and reduced price lunch” indicator. The National School Lunch Program collects data – the number of students receiving free lunch and the number of students receiving reduced price lunch – for every public and nonprofit private schools in the nation. Children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty level are eligible for free meals. Those with incomes between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price meals, for which students can be charged no more than 40 cents.

Free and reduced price lunch data can help you identify areas of greatest need – both for children and families. It is one of many indicators used to asses childhood poverty.

Majority Minority Schools

Another recently updated data set from NCES focuses on the racial and ethnic makeup of student populations. The “Majority Minority Schools” layer displays the location of public schools in the US where less than 50% of the students are non-Hispanic white.  The data includes the following race/ethnicity categories:

• American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic
• Asian, not Hispanic
• Black or African American, not Hispanic
• Hispanic/Latino
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, not Hispanic
• White, not Hispanic
• Two or more races, not Hispanic

Other data available from NCES includes:

• Locations of Magnet programs, Pre-Kindergarten programs, and Title I schools
• Public education expenditures for instruction, administration, teacher salaries, and support services
• Public education revenue from Federal, state, and local funds
• On-time graduation rates
• Higher education facilities and financial aid award prevalence
• Private school locations and designations
• Attendance zones