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Table 2.  Percentage of public elementary and secondary school students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and percentage enrollment by race and ethnicity in the 100 and 500 largest school districts in the United States and jurisdictions: School year 2007–08
 
All school districts 100 largest school districts 500 largest school districts
District characteristic      
Membership eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, of those
    schools that reported free and reduced-price lunch1 
41.2   52.0   47.5  
             
Percentage enrollment by race and ethnicity2             
American Indian/Alaska Native  1.2   0.5   0.7  
Asian/Pacific Islander  4.8   7.5   6.7  
Hispanic  22.0   36.5   31.8  
Black  16.9   26.4   23.3  
White  55.1   29.1   37.5  
1 These percentages should be interpreted with caution. The Department of Defense dependents schools (overseas and domestic), the Bureau of Indian Education, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands did not report free and reduced-price lunch eligibility and are not included in the totals. Also, states may not have reported students eligible for reduced-price meals, and a number of states reported participation instead of eligibility data, which may not be strictly comparable. See the Methodology section, appendix B, for further description. Percentages are based on those schools that reported data.
2 Black includes African American and Hispanic includes Latino.
NOTE: Data include all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, four outlying areas (American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands), the Bureau of Indian Education, and the Department of Defense dependents schools (overseas and domestic). Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), "Public Elementary/ Secondary School Universe Survey," 2007–08, Version 1a, and "Local Education Agency Universe Survey," 2007–08, Version 1a.