How Different Groups Perform

U.S. Achievement by Poverty Level in Public Schools

One measure of poverty in U.S. public elementary schools is the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch⁷. In order to examine how fourth-graders' scores on the combined reading literacy scale are associated with their schools' poverty level (percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch), U.S. public schools were classified into five groups: (1) schools with the lowest poverty levels of less than 10 percent; (2) schools with poverty levels ranging from 10 to 24.9 percent; (3) schools with poverty levels ranging from 25 to 49.9 percent; (4) schools with poverty levels ranging from 50 to 74.9 percent; and (5) schools with the highest poverty levels of 75 percent or more. Again, data on this page refer only to PIRLS 2001 results from public schools in the United States⁸.

• Fourth-graders in U.S. public elementary schools with the highest poverty levels score lower on the combined reading literacy scale compared to their counterparts in schools with lower poverty levels (figure 9).
• Fourth-graders in schools with intermediate poverty levels of 10 to 24.9 percent and 25 to 49.9 percent score higher on the combined reading literacy scale than students in schools with poverty levels of 50 to 74.9 percent and 75 percent or more. However, there are no detectable differences in scores between U.S. fourth-graders in public schools with poverty levels of 10 to 24.9 percent and 25 to 49.9 percent.
• On average, lower percentages of fourth-graders in the highest poverty public schools in the United States reach the upper two international benchmarks (top 10 percent and upper quartile) than their counterparts in the lowest poverty schools. For example, in the highest poverty schools, about 3 percent of the fourth-grade students reach the top 10 percent international benchmark, while in the lowest poverty schools, about 34 percent of the students reach the same benchmark. Additionally, about 14 percent of students in the highest poverty schools reach the upper quarter benchmark, but in the lowest poverty schools, 64 percent of the students reach that benchmark.

7 Data for the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in U.S. public elementary schools participating in PIRLS 2001 were taken from the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD), "Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey," 1999-2000.
8 Since the measure of school poverty used for the United States in this analysis cannot be applied to other countries, only data for U.S. schools are used in these comparisons.