Majority Of The US Public School Children Are Poor

Most of the US public school children are steeped in poverty for the first time in 50 years, according to a report conducted by the Southern Education Foundation, which came to its conclusions from information that showed how many US children can consume free or subsidized meals.

It is worrying to note that 51 percent of students live in poverty. There are an estimated 74 .5 million children in America.

There has been a continuously rising trend of poverty levels since 1989. On that year, 32 percent of students qualified for such meals. By 2000, the number had risen to 38 percent. In 2013, it had gone up another 13 percent, according to data given by the National Center for Education Statistics, according to rt.com.

"No longer can we consider the problems and needs of low income students simply a matter of fairness," the Southern Education Foundation report says, quoting from a previous analysis. "Their success or failure in the public schools will determine the entire body of human capital and educational potential that the nation will possess in the future."

Students can avail of free meals if their families are already dependent on benefit programs, or if their household income is just 135 percent of the poverty level. Otherwise, they can consume reduced-price meals if the household income is about 185 percent of the poverty level. In 2013, the federal poverty level was $23,550 for a family of four.

About 13 of the low-income states were situated in the south, while six were in the West. Three states were shown to have the highest concentrations of low-income students: Mississippi led with 71 percent - almost three out of every four public school children needed help. New Mexico was next, with 68 percent, followed by Louisiana with 65 percent.

"That deepening poverty likely will complicate already fraught political discussions on how to educate American students, as prior research has shown students are significantly more at risk academically in schools with 40 percent or higher concentrations of poverty," wrote Education Week.

"This is a watershed moment when you look at that map," said Kent McGuire, president of the Southern Education Foundation, the nation's oldest education philanthropy, according to washingtonpost.com.

The Obama administration wants Congress to add $1 billion to the $14.4 billion every year for education of children. It also wants Congress to fund preschool for low-income families. The states and the federal government spend about $500 billion annually on primary and secondary schools, about $79 billion of it from Washington.

Another disturbing study by The National Center on Family Homelessness found that one child in every 30 was homeless in 2013, touching an all-time high for 2.5 million American children, mainly due to high poverty rates and lack of affordable housing. Called 'America's Youngest Outcasts,' the report used "most recent federal data that comprehensively counts homeless children, using more than 30 variables from over a dozen established data sets."

It found that in 2012 to 2013, child homelessness in the US shot up by eight percent overall, as 31 states and the District of Columbia showed some increase, according to the report.

Shahera Hyatt, director of the California Homeless Youth Project was once homeless too. She said that she was not surprised by the data. "These terms like 'couch surfing' and 'doubled-up' sound a lot more polite than they are in practice," she said. "For teenagers, it might be exchanging sex for a place to stay or staying someplace that does not feel safe because they are so mired in their day-to-day survival needs."

It is important to offer them affordable housing, education, employment opportunities for homeless parents, and special services for mothers forced into homelessness due to domestic violence.

"Without decisive action and the allocation of sufficient resources, the nation will fail to reach the stated federal goal of ending family homelessness by 2020, and child homelessness may result in a permanent Third World in America," the report concludes.