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How Free Lunches Pay Off for Schools
10/22/13 | Marketplace
Behind the Headline
Fraud in the Lunchroom
Education Next
Some schools and districts go to great lengths to encourage families to fill out application forms for free- and reduced-price lunches. But, as Amy Scott reports for Marketplace
this is about so much more than lunch. It’s about millions of dollars in school funding. That’s because Maryland, like many states, determines how much money school districts receive for disadvantaged students based on the number of kids who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
She continues, “what starts with a free turkey sandwich, an apple and a carton of milk ends up driving more than a quarter of the district’s operating budget. Nationally we’re talking billions of dollars pegged to that one number.”
In the Winter 2010 issue of Education Next, David Bass investigated whether free lunch enrollments were an accurate measure of poverty in “Fraud in the Lunchroom.”
-Education Next
