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The Daily Signal
They Claimed
Giving All Students Free School Lunches Would Raise Test Scores. Here’s
What Happened.
Chris Butler
November 10, 2015
In 2014, education leaders ranging from the U.S. secretary of education
down to local school officials promised that kids would do better if
districts adopted a federal program that provides no-cost lunches to
students regardless of financial need.
It hasn’t worked out that way in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Board members in charge of the Hamilton County School System voted in
the spring of 2014 to enroll schools with the highest percentage of
disadvantaged students in the Community Eligibility Provision for five
years, starting with the 2014-15 school year; 47 of 73 Hamilton County
schools participate in CEP, said Carolyn Childs, Hamilton’s school
nutrition director.
But instead of rising, test scores in Hamilton County went down this
year, with the Chattanooga Times Free Press reporting that the school
system experienced “less-than-expected academic progress.”
According to some of the TCAP scores available on the Tennessee
Department of Education’s website:
The number of students who fell below basic, the
lowest possible score, on the Algebra I portion of the test rose from
18.8 percent to 21.9 percent.
The number of students who fell below basic on the
biology portion of the test rose from 15.3 percent to 18 percent.
The number of students who fell below basic at the
third- through eighth-grade reading level rose from 13.4 percent to 15
percent.
The number of students who fell below basic at the
third- through eighth-grade math level rose from 15.1 percent to 15.9
percent.
The number of students who fell below basic on the
English I portion of the test rose from 8.4 percent to 9.1 percent.
The idea behind the program, which is administered by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, is a simple one. As U.S. Education Secretary
Arne Duncan told school superintendents, kids do better taking tests
when they have a belly full of food, and that’s why, rich or poor, they
need a school lunch at no cost to the students. Taxpayers pick up the
tab.
Child nutrition directors at schools in Georgia and West Virginia said
in a USDA testimonial that test scores shot up as soon as their schools
enrolled.
Hamilton County School System officials made the same promises, said
Rhonda Thurman, one of that county’s nine school board members. But
test results there failed to live up to school board members’
expectations.
“I was indeed told that if the kids get better nutritional value, then
the scores will be better. But if we have certain schools where 95 to
98 percent of the kids are on free and reduced lunches, then why are
those kids not Rhodes scholars?” Thurman asked.
“There is no excuse whatsoever for the lower academic scores. If free
lunches were the ticket, then these kids should have improved. We’re
just going to have to quit fooling ourselves,” Thurman said.
The Times Free Press reported that the school system did worse this
year on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program’s reading,
biology, and English tests. The TCAP measures students’ overall
academic performance.
Students in the county also took the Tennessee Value Added Assessment
System test, which measures how well teachers got information across to
students.
TVAAS test results for the last school year show that Hamilton County
students received the lowest possible test rating, one out of five,
according to the Times Free Press.
Thurman said no one in the school system has asked why CEP didn’t
improve test scores, despite promises that they would.
School board member Jonathan Welch, who supports CEP, told Tennessee
Watchdog he doesn’t remember anyone promising that the program would
improve overall test scores. He also said he also couldn’t account for
why test scores fell, and that it’s too early to make a call on the
effectiveness of the program.
“Regardless of whether this program impacts test scores, we still have
to feed our children,” Welch said. “If they go hungry, then I fear
they’d do even worse academically, and that would scare me more.”
School officials said last year that giving all students—rich and
poor—a free meal spares poor kids from embarrassment.
The number of participating students increased from 24,533 during the
last school year to 25,033 for the current school year, Childs said.
The Hamilton County School System has 43,462 students, meaning more
than half the district’s students use CEP, said Brian Seay, student
information systems manager.
More than 4,000 schools nationwide participate in the program,
according to Duncan’s letter to the school superintendents. CEP
currently has more than 8 million students participating nationwide,
said USDA spokeswoman Wanda Worley.
Better in Nashville
Elsewhere in the state, Davidson County officials enrolled 85,000
students in CEP last school year.
According to the Tennessean, Davidson County students made “incremental
progress” on their standardized test scores for the 2014-15 year, in
line with statewide gains.
Six percent of students statewide got an advanced
level score for Algebra I. Twenty-three point five percent of Davidson
County students did the same, which was 6.1 percentage points higher
than what they scored the previous school year.
Twenty point eight percent of students statewide got
an advanced level score for biology. Twelve point eight percent of
Davidson County students did the same, which was 3.1 percentage points
higher than what they scored the previous school year.
Eleven percent of third-through eighth-grade
students statewide got an advanced level score for reading. 8.3 percent
of Davidson County students did the same, which was 0.4 percentage
points lower than what they scored the previous school year.
Twenty-four point one percent of third- through
eighth-grade students statewide got an advanced level score for math .
Eighteen point nine percent of Davidson County students did the same,
which was 0.4 percentage points higher than what they scored the
previous school year.
Thirteen point two percent of students statewide got
an advanced level score for English 1. Ten percent of Davidson County
students did the same, which was 2.5 percentage points higher than what
they scored the previous school year.
As for Hamilton County, Welch said CEP’s future depends on how much
additional money the feds offer.
Thurman was more blunt.
“I don’t mean this to sound crude, but the Bible uses this word, so
I’ll use it too. We’re just a bunch of grant whores. Anything that has
a dollar attached to it, we’ll take. The school system is all about
getting anything that’s free,” Thurman said.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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