School poverty (%FRL) accounts for about 50% of a school's median student achievement¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2018 · checked against its sources 2026-10-09 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2023: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? About 50% of a school's median achievement is accounted for by the percentage of students eligible for FRL, with median achievement at the 29th percentile in schools where all students are FRL-eligible versus the 73rd percentile in schools with none. → Andy Hegedus 2018
Evidence¶
Andy Hegedus 2018¶
Andy Hegedus, Ed.D. (2018). Evaluating the Relationships between Poverty and School Performance. NWEA Research Report. https://www.nwea.org/research-data-galleries/poverty-and-school-performance
q2 · i? · associational · r2
Observational analysis of about 1,500 randomly sampled NWEA MAP Growth schools linked to NCES demographics, plotting median achievement percentile against school %FRL (Figure 2.1). The analysis found "about 50% of a school’s achievement is accounted for by the percentage of students eligible for FRL"; best-fit lines put typical median achievement at the 29th percentile in all-FRL schools and the 73rd percentile in no-FRL schools.
"The analysis determined that about 50% of a school’s achievement is accounted for by the percentage of students eligible for FRL in a school, as shown in Figure 2.1."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- School poverty is only weakly associated with median student growth in a school — related
- Lowest-income schools show more variable growth than highest-income schools, with more schools both below the 50th and above the 82nd growth percentile — related
- Achievement declines from 2019 to 2022 were larger for students in high-poverty schools than in low-poverty schools in grades 1–2 — related
- Achievement of the lowest-growth schools varies dramatically, and fall achievement accounts for about 80% of spring achievement versus 14% for growth — related
- Research finds concentrated poverty harms achievement, with a tipping point around 50-60% school poverty after which achievement declines dramatically — related
- After accounting for incoming academic achievement, neighborhood crime and poverty show effectively no relationship with school safety — related
- School median student growth percentiles correlate with student disadvantage — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
frl-accounts-for-half-of-school-achievement |
title |
School poverty (%FRL) accounts for about 50% of a school's median student achievement |
description |
School poverty (%FRL) accounts for about 50% of a school's median student achievement |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2018 |
source_checked |
2026-10-09 |
recheck_by |
2023 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-09 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — andy-hegedus-2018 |
Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.