Students are less likely to get suspended from school when the means test for free school meals is ... [+]
Reducing the stigma around free school meals reduces the risk students will be suspended for poor behavior, according to a new study.
Providing meals regardless of family income and without means testing students cuts the rate of school suspensions, researchers found.
And the effect is particularly pronounced among students from low-income families and Hispanic students.
Students are normally given free school meals if household income is below a certain threshold. Applicants are means tested and those eligible are typically given meal tickets or allocated to separate lunch lines.
In the U.S., the National School Lunch Program, which provides free or subsidized meals to around 30 million students a day, at an annual cost of $14bn.
But a new study looked at the impact of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, which allows schools in high-poverty areas to offer free meals to all students, regardless of income.
Around 20 million U.S. students attend a school that has adopted the CEP, first introduced in 2014/15.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina and the U.S. Census Bureau analyzed data on all students enrolled at schools in Oregon between 2010 and 2017 to see the effect on school discipline of reducing the stigma associated with free school meals.
They found that ending the distinction between students receiving free school meals and those who paid for their food had a significant impact on suspension rates.
This was equivalent to a 10% decline in the likelihood a student will get suspended, rising to 22% for Grades 9 to 12.
Students from low-income backgrounds and Hispanic students - Oregon’s largest student minority by ethnicity - saw particular reduction in suspension rates according to the study, published in the American Educational Research Journal, the journal of the American Educational Research Association.
“These findings suggest that universal meal provision can help narrow persistent educational opportunity gaps associated with family economic disadvantage,” researchers said.
While suspensions in the state since 2010 have fallen overall - partly the result of laws designed to eliminate zero tolerance school disciplinary policies - they have fallen faster in schools taking part in CEP.
Even though they have higher rates of poverty, by 2017 students in schools taking part in CEP had lower rates of suspension than students in schools that did not implement the program.
Researchers also found evidence that it was the reduction in stigma, rather than improved nutrition, that was behind the fall in suspension rates.
While low-income students are eligible for free school meals, some decide not to register. Analysis found the biggest effect in suspension reduction among those who had previously registered, compared with those who had not.
The findings “are consistent with the idea that CEP reduces suspensions by ameliorating the stigma associated with school meals in means-tested environments,” researchers said.
However, the team acknowledge that its data do not distinguish between the effects on student behavior and the effects on teacher responses to student behavior.
One possibility is that CEP changed how teachers perceived students, or freed up teachers’ time to monitor student behavior by reducing the amount of paperwork.
“Despite these limitations, we believe our findings highlight the potential to create more equitable schools by reducing the salience of labels that evoke stigma,” researchers added.
