This story was reported and written by Radio IQ.
Recent years have seen a dramatic rise in the number of students considered "at-risk" by the Virginia Department of Education. That's because state officials now have better data.
For many years, schools identified how many students lived in poverty by taking a look at who received free or reduced-price lunches. That left many high-poverty students out of the equation, and the system had to be scrapped when many divisions started making meals universally available. Levi Goren at the Commonwealth Institute says the new way of identifying high-poverty students is based on participation in federal assistance programs.
"It's a good thing that we’re more accurately counting the number of low-income students in Virginia," Goren says. "And we need to do the work of making sure that those students have the resources they need to thrive."
Carol Bauer at the Virginia Education Association says student performance is kind of like Olympic performance. Athletes who have the funding do well.
"They have the uniforms. They have the coaches. They have the transportation. When they're missing some of those things, they aren't as successful," Bauer explains. "And I think the same could probably be said for our students. When they have the resources that they need, then, in fact, they can be successful."
Now that state education officials have better data about which students are living in poverty, the Department of Education estimates that 43% of public school students are at-risk. That means that almost half of Virginia students live in poverty.
