The biggest surge among uncounted kids was among Hasidic Jews who are very poor, and hospitals put them on Medicaid. Now, New York looks at two sets of data for each school and picks the set that gives the school the highest count. The other set includes children who are on AFDC, Medicaid or SSI or who are in foster care. Because high school students are far less likely to apply for free lunches, school districts have devised various ways of assessing poverty for high schools, such as using the lunch count of the feeder elementary schools. Another complicating factor is that calculations must be based in part on the poverty level of the school's neighborhood, not just the children enrolled in the school.
Some schools have higher poverty among their students than in the surrounding attendance area.
Very few people significantly understand these things, and the data are always questionable. Debra Shore is a Chicago writer.