There is now clear evidence that family income is not measured accurately by free and reduced-price meal (FRM) enrollment. But with decades of policy infrastructure built around using FRM enrollment in this way, and no obvious alternatives at hand, what should we do? To begin to answer this question, we develop a conceptual framework defined by six properties of a desirable measure of family income–or more broadly, student risk–for use in consequential education policies. We compare FRM enrollment to four alternative measures of income and risk (I&R) using our framework. We also compare FRM enrollment and several of these alternatives empirically using data from Missouri and document the extent to which the different measures agree in terms of ranking schools and districts. Conceptually and empirically, we show that alternative measures are preferable to FRM enrollment for the purpose of identifying low-income and at-risk students, although FRM enrollment is better than one might expect at identifying schools and districts that serve high-risk populations despite its conceptual shortcomings.
Fazlul, I., Koedel, C., & Parsons, E. (2024). Measuring Family Income and Student Risk in Public Schools. In T. Downes & K. M. Killeen (Eds.), What Comes After Lunch?: Alternative Measures of Economic and Social Disadvantage and Their Implications for Education Research (pp. 1–24). essay, IAP.
