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Project Graduation: Latest Snapshot of High-Poverty U.S. Schools

Each year the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) releases a report on important education developments and trends in the U.S. This year’s edition, The Condition of Education 2010, includes a special section on high-poverty schools. See also The Condition of Education web area of the NCES web site.

Using as its poverty measure, the percentage of students who are eligible for the National School Lunch Program’s free or reduced-price lunch, NCES reports that nearly one-fifth of all public schools in the U.S.―including nearly 10 percent of public high schools―educate students from high-poverty homes.

See a snapshot of the report’s statistics - for the 2007-08 school year - which demonstrate once again the strong link between poverty and the likelihood students will fail to complete high school.