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What is poverty ? Poverty
What is poverty ?
Poverty is when having a lack of income and resources, to help provide the proper living for a community. 
 The government plays a part in poverty because, of the standards that are put into place and how important poverty is. 
There are poverty standards and they help the governments understand social conditions, evaluate economic policies, and carry out programs to help the poor.
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What is poverty ? Poverty
What is poverty ?
Poverty is when having a lack of income and resources, to help provide the proper living for a community. 
 The government plays a part in poverty because, of the standards that are put into place and how important poverty is. 
There are poverty standards and they help the governments understand social conditions, evaluate economic policies, and carry out programs to help the poor.
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What is poverty ?
What is poverty ?
Poverty is when having a lack of income and resources, to help provide the proper living for a community. 
 The government plays a part in poverty because, of the standards that are put into place and how important poverty is. 
There are poverty standards and they help the governments understand social conditions, evaluate economic policies, and carry out programs to help the poor.

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Inequality is on the Rise
Inequality is on the Rise
The 24th Special session of the General Assembly reiterated that social development requires reduction in inequality of wealth and a more equitable distribution of the benefits of economic growth within and among nations.

Over the past decades, inequalities in income distribution and access to productive resources, basic social services, opportunities, markets, and information have been on the rise worldwide, often causing and exacerbating poverty.

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Inequality of Outcome v. Inequality of Opportunity
Inequality of Outcome v. Inequality of Opportunity
 Inequality of outcomes occurs when individuals do not possess the same level of material wealth or overall living economic conditions. Development theory has largely been concerned with inequalities in standards of living, such as inequalities in income/wealth, education, health, and nutrition. 
The opportunity-oriented perspective acknowledges that circumstances of birth are essential to life outcomes and that equality of opportunity requires a fair starting point for all. What should be equalized is not means of living, but the actual opportunities of living that give people the freedom to pursue a life of their own choosing.
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Poverty as lack of Opportunity
Poverty as lack of Opportunity
Economic inequality has traditionally been conceived as inequality of outcomes, measuring income, consumption or wealth differences among individuals or families. However, in the last decade, this debate has increasingly shifted from inequality of outcome to equality of opportunity. This approach paid greater attention to social and economic circumstances which hinder individuals from competing at the same starting level 
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The inequality of wages.
The inequality of wages.
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The Great Recession.
The Great Recession.
The Great Recession was an economic decline in the world markets during the late 2000's.
The Great Recession was based upon buying in high prices and paying off years later, but it ended in many people being in debt and loss of money from banks. 
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Analysis and Comparison of poverty and unequal distribution of opportunity.
Analysis and Comparison of poverty and unequal distribution of opportunity.
Poverty and the inequality distribution of opportunities are the outcome of economic factors. They both depend on one another because the lack of money a community has it will increase the rate of poverty, because of the economy not having the funds to help improve the opportunities that could be given. 
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How wealth plays a role towards economic factors that plays a role on the social factors.
How wealth plays a role towards economic factors that plays a role on the social factors. 
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What the government wants v.s What is needed
What the government wants v.s What is needed

# data[].attributes.body
What is poverty ?
Poverty is when having a lack of income and resources, to help provide the proper living for a community. 
 The government plays a part in poverty because, of the standards that are put into place and how important poverty is. 
There are poverty standards and they help the governments understand social conditions, evaluate economic policies, and carry out programs to help the poor.

# data[].attributes.body
What is poverty ?
Poverty is when having a lack of income and resources, to help provide the proper living for a community. 
 The government plays a part in poverty because, of the standards that are put into place and how important poverty is. 
There are poverty standards and they help the governments understand social conditions, evaluate economic policies, and carry out programs to help the poor.

# data[].attributes.body
Poverty is when having a lack of income and resources, to help provide the proper living for a community.

The government plays a part in poverty because, of the standards that are put into place and how important poverty is.

There are poverty standards and they help the governments understand social conditions, evaluate economic policies, and carry out programs to help the poor.

# data[].attributes.body
The 24th Special session of the General Assembly reiterated that social development requires reduction in inequality of wealth and a more equitable distribution of the benefits of economic growth within and among nations.

Over the past decades, inequalities in income distribution and access to productive resources, basic social services, opportunities, markets, and information have been on the rise worldwide, often causing and exacerbating poverty.

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Extraordinary economic growth and widespread improvements in well-being have failed to close the deep divides across countries and within societies.

More than 70 per cent of the world population now live in countries where income inequality has increased in the last three decades. Inequalities between social groups, including those based on age, gender, race, ethnicity, migrant status and disability, are pervasive in developed and developing countries alike.

UN DESA has been calling attention to inequality and its consequences for many years. Fifteen years ago, DESA warned that growing inequality could jeopardize the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals. In 2013, DESA argued that addressing inequalities is not only a moral imperative but also necessary in order to unleash the human and productive potential of each country's population and to bring development towards a socially-sustainable path.

Inequality has since moved to the forefront of the policy debate. "Leave no one behind" is the rallying cry of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. And reducing inequality within and among countries is Goal 10 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

If the vision of a shared future is to be carried forward, everyone will have to seize every opportunity to take bold and decisive action to reduce inequality.

In Focus
Learn more..
Social Development Briefs

NEW! World Social Report (previous Report on the World Social Situation)

Meetings, events and workshops

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Extraordinary economic growth and widespread improvements in well-being have failed to close the deep divides across countries and within societies. More than 70 per cent of the world population now live in countries where income inequality has increased in the last three decades.

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Inequality of Outcome v. Inequality of Opportunity

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Inequality of Outcome v. Inequality of Opportunity

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Inequality of outcomes occurs when individuals do not possess the same level of material wealth or overall living economic conditions. Development theory has largely been concerned with inequalities in standards of living, such as inequalities in income/wealth, education, health, and nutrition.
The opportunity-oriented perspective acknowledges that circumstances of birth are essential to life outcomes and that equality of opportunity requires a fair starting point for all. What should be equalized is not means of living, but the actual opportunities of living that give people the freedom to pursue a life of their own choosing.

# data[].attributes.body
Economic inequality has traditionally been conceived as inequality of outcomes, measuring income, consumption or wealth differences among individuals or families. However, in the last decade, this debate has increasingly shifted from inequality of outcome to equality of opportunity. This approach paid greater attention to social and economic circumstances which hinder individuals from competing at the same starting level

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The page you requested does not exist. For your convenience, a search was performed using the query publications 20 facts about us inequality everyone should know.

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The Great Recession was an economic decline in the world markets during the late 2000's.

The Great Recession was based upon buying in high prices and paying off years later, but it ended in many people being in debt and loss of money from banks.

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Here's What Caused the Great Recession | History

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Analysis and Comparison of poverty and unequal distribution of opportunity.

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Analysis and Comparison of poverty and unequal distribution of opportunity.

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Poverty and the inequality distribution of opportunities are the outcome of economic factors. They both depend on one another because the lack of money a community has it will increase the rate of poverty, because of the economy not having the funds to help improve the opportunities that could be given.

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Inequality can be both good and bad for growth, depending on what inequality and whose growth. Unequal societies may be holding back one segment of the population while helping another. Similarly, high levels of inequality may be due to a variety of factors; some good, some bad for growth.

This column tests this hypothesis by "unpacking" both inequality and growth: Inequality is decomposed into inequality of opportunity, due to factors that are beyond the individual's control, and residual inequality, while growth is measured at different steps of the income ladder. An application to the United States covering 1960 to 2010 finds that it is mostly inequality of opportunity that is limiting the growth prospects of the poor. That would suggest that policies that equalize individual opportunity may promote not only equity but also economic growth - above all for poor individuals.

Inequality can be both good and bad for growth
Much has been written about the relationship between inequality and economic growth, yet a consensus on (even) the sign of this relationship has yet to emerge: Is high inequality today good or bad for future income growth prospects? What makes this a difficult question to answer is the fact that there are arguably a variety of different channels via which inequality impacts on growth. Early thinking viewed inequality as a positive factor. Kaldor (1956), for example, considers income inequality as necessary in order to provide for savings (the rich save more than the poor), and thus key for capital accumulation and economic growth. Also, more unequal societies may provide stronger incentives which ultimately motivate individuals to work harder in order to succeed.

More recent studies explore the conditions under which inequality may act as a negative factor. One strand of this literature appeals to the Meltzer-Richard's median voter hypothesis, see e.g. Persson and Tabellini (1994) and Alesina and Rodrik (1994). It is argued that high inequality leads a relatively poor median voter to vote for high tax rates, which in turn reduce incentives for investment and cause low growth. However, one could argue that a poor median voter might also vote for redistributive policies that are not necessarily bad for growth, as for example, investments in public education ( Saint Paul and Verdier, 1996). Galor and Zeira (1993) and Banerjee and Newman (1993) put the emphasis on credit market imperfections, namely the inability of the poor to get loans to finance their education and to be entrepreneurs. More unequal societies may then be more prone to wasting human resources, which would lead to lower growth. This view was, in the case of Galor, integrated with his overall argument that, in modern societies, the key to fast growth is not capital accumulation but improvements in human capital ( Galor and Moav, 2006).

Inequality of opportunity is mostly bad for growth
Marrero and Rodríguez ( 2012, 2013) decompose total inequality into an inequality of opportunity (IO) component ( Roemer, 1993), the inequality that is due to circumstances outside the person's control such as parental education, race, country of origin, and a residual inequality component that is assumed to be due to effort and luck ( Bourguignon et al., 2007). In two separate applications, one to the European Union member countries and one to the US states, they find strong evidence that levels of inequality of opportunity are negatively correlated with growth while the residual ("good inequality") tends to help growth. The rationale is that IO may harm economic growth because it favors human capital accumulation by individuals with better social origins, rather than by individuals with more talent. Perceptions of unequal opportunities may also reduce investments in human capital to the extent that they affect individual aspirations.

Other empirical studies have obtained similar results. Hsieh et al. (2013) find that occupational barriers faced by minorities was bad for growth in the US between 1960 and 2008. Bradbury and Triest (2016), using measures of absolute and relative intergenerational mobility as proxies for equality of opportunity, find that mobility has a positive effect on future economic growth. It has proven harder to reproduce the negative relationship between IO and growth using cross-country data, see Ferreira et al. (2014), either because the relationship does not hold true in all countries, or because the data are not strictly comparable across countries.

Inequality of opportunity is particularly bad for the poor
To study how IO affects the income growth of individuals at different steps of the socio-economic ladder, one must also unpack growth. In an earlier study, van der Weide and Milanovic (2014) found that higher inequality favors the growth prospects of some (the rich) while it limits the growth prospects of others (the poor). To what extent is this relationship channeled through inequality of opportunity? Marrero, Rodríguez and van der Weide (2016) try to answer this question by "unpacking" both inequality and growth.

Using individual level data for the United States covering the period 1960 to 2010, they compute state level measures of IO, total inequality, and income growth rates at different steps of the income distribution. The same data is used to derive a set of controls including variables on education, employment and demographics. The IO measure of choice quantifies the degree to which race and gender determine a person's income success (the IPUMS-USA does not include information on parental education). Alternative measures of IO are considered for robustness.

The study confirms that total inequality is negatively correlated with future income growth of the poor and positively correlated with income growth of the rich. Adding IO to the regression reveals that this correlation between inequality and growth is largely channeled through IO, leaving the effect of total inequality mostly insignificant. The robustness analysis confirms that this is particularly true for the poor: It is mostly IO that is holding back the growth prospects at the bottom end of the income distribution. While there appears to be a positive correlation between total inequality (as well as IO) and income growth of the rich, this association is not as robust. This result, if confirmed by more studies, is potentially very important: it identifies the type of inequality which holds back growth chances of the poor.

Future research will hopefully shed light on how IO is affecting a person's income success. It is conceivable that IO proxies, unequal access to good schooling or discrimination in the labor market, to name two candidate channels, either of which signifies that inefficiencies that will disproportionally affect the growth prospects of the disadvantaged.

Promoting inclusive growth
This would suggest that policies that equalize individual opportunity may promote not only equity but also economic growth - above all for poor individuals. One way of equalizing opportunity is by increasing public spending on the education of children from disadvantaged backgrounds or promoting cash transfers conditional on school attendance. Empirical findings for Europe show that reducing high school dropout rates is an effective way of increasing opportunities ( Marrero and Rodríguez, 2012). An equalization of the quality of public and private education too will arguably help to reduce IO. Other policy interventions may include reducing long-term unemployment, improving access to child care etc. In curbing IO these policies promote not only social justice but plausibly also economic growth. It is unclear however where the push for such inclusive growth policies will be coming from, when those in power stand to gain the least from such policies.

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Inequality can be both good and bad for growth, depending on what inequality and whose growth. Unequal societies may be holding back one segment of the population while helping another. Similarly, high levels of inequality may be due to a variety of factors; some good, some bad for growth.

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How wealth plays a role towards economic factors that plays a role on the social factors. 

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How wealth plays a role towards economic factors that plays a role on the social factors. 

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The Best Documentary Ever - WEALTH INEQUALITY IN AMERICA (HD)

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What the government wants v.s What is needed

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What the government wants v.s What is needed

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The governments main focus is if the economy is making enough, for them to step in and spend their time providing the help that is needed.

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The inequality distribution of opportunity. 

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The inequality distribution of opportunity. 

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"Interesting. The gap between rich and poor is not as great as we thought."

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"Interesting. The gap between rich and poor is not as great as we thought."

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The impact of poverty and unequal distributions of opportunity in schools. 

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The impact of poverty and unequal distributions of opportunity in schools. 

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Poverty plays a part in the inequality distribution of opportunity because, poverty is based upon the economic and social factors.

These social and economic  factors play a part of the opportunities because of whats surrounding the person and if they have access to opportunities that those in higher class levels have such as the school having enough money to provide basic needs.

This makes a big impact on schools because when it comes to education, such as testing have less access to practice.

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Persistent gaps in test scores and college enrollment between students from low income families and other more financially secure students are well documented, as are the challenges schools face in trying to improve student outcomes. Too often, these disparities are seen as inevitable and the challenges insurmountable. Increased investments are characterized as wasteful, rather than necessary. Yet, there are concrete and measurable deficiencies in the educational opportunities available to students in high poverty schools.

This report takes an in-depth look at resources and classes available at over 1,800 public schools across Virginia. The findings are clear: students who have fewer resources outside of the school building are getting shortchanged in the classroom as well. And the differences are striking.

This is tragic because it's precisely in these schools that heightened funding can have the biggest impact, and it's high poverty communities that could benefit most from having more skilled, better educated workers.

It's largely Virginia's Black and Hispanic students that are being deprived of the opportunity to pursue their goals and career ambitions. That's because students of color are extremely over-represented in high poverty schools. About one out of every six students of color (15 percent) in Virginia attended a high-poverty school in the 2013-2014 school year, as did more than one out of every five (22 percent) Black students - compared to just 3 percent of White students.

Alarmingly, these challenges are not shrinking - they are becoming more widespread across the state. The number of schools with high concentrations of students from low-income families has doubled since the 2002-2003 school year, while enrollment in these schools has more than doubled.

The lack of sufficient resources and offerings represents a lost opportunity for our children, communities, and the future economy of Virginia. This needs to be addressed by Virginia leaders by better targeting resources to high poverty schools and by promoting enrollment policies that encourage racially and economically diverse schools. At the same time, they should also be skeptical of using public funds for private schools, particularly if funding is not targeted to low income students or the benefit is inadequate for tuition as that can further segregate schools.

Fewer Resources and Opportunities in High Poverty Schools
High poverty schools in Virginia have less experienced teachers, lower teacher salaries, are less likely to have critical math, science, and advanced coursework, spend less per student on instructors and instructional materials with state and local dollars, and have fewer advanced courses. All of this shows that students in high poverty schools - many of whom have fewer resources and supports outside of the school building - are also getting less in the classroom. And, it's largely students of color that are feeling these impacts.
Teacher Experience
The rate of first or second year teachers is even higher (17 percent) for high poverty schools that also have high percentages of students of color.
Instructional Spending
Teachers in high poverty schools also earn lower average salaries compared to low poverty schools, likely in part because of this discrepancy in teacher experience. The average teacher salary in high poverty schools was about $46,000 in 2013-2014 school year compared to over $57,000 in low poverty schools.
Course Offerings
High poverty middle schools and high schools are also less likely to offer advanced coursework compared to schools with low concentrations of poverty. For example, the vast majority of middle schools (93 percent) with low concentrations of poverty offered Algebra I, while only three quarters (75 percent) of middle schools with high concentrations of poverty offered this key course for building foundational math skills and creating a gateway to higher level math. It is also a required course for acceptance at some specialty high schools such as some of Virginia's Governor's schools. Similarly, almost all high schools with low concentrations of poverty were able to provide Calculus and Physics, which are important admissions criteria for many colleges and universities. Meanwhile, in high poverty high schools, only 57 percent offered Calculus and less than half (43 percent) offered Physics.

And, it's not just the math and sciences - students in high poverty high schools are also less likely to offer any Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) class. Less than three quarters (71 percent) of high poverty high schools offered at least one AP or IB class compared to 99 percent of low poverty high schools. For those high poverty high schools that did offer an AP or IB class, they offered only about half as many -about 10 on average - than low poverty high schools, which offered 19 of these classes on average.
Worse Outcomes in High Poverty Schools
There are clear consequences to providing fewer resources to students in high poverty schools. Students in high poverty schools do worse on standardized tests, are more likely to be chronically absent during the school year, more likely to be held back in their grade, and less likely to graduate on-time.

Only one-third (34%) of high poverty schools in Virginia were fully accredited by the state in 2013-2014 compared to almost all (99%) of low poverty schools. This stark contrast shows the unequal outcomes on test performance that result from giving students with some of the greatest needs the fewest resources and supports. Meanwhile, the percentage of accredited high poverty schools that also have high percentages of students of color was even lower - just 29 percent.

Students in high poverty schools are also less likely to advance to the next grade level and graduate high school on time. The rate of students failing to advance to the next grade level was three times higher in high poverty schools (3 percent) compared to low poverty schools (1 percent). These attendance and retention challenges can lead to students dropping out of school or not graduating high school on time.
Virginia Schools Increasingly Segregated - by Income and Race
Virginia has 212 public schools with extremely high concentrations of students from low-income families - more than one out of ten (11.6 percent) of Virginia's public schools. These are schools in which at least three quarters of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch, indicating a family income of $43,568 or less for a family of four (2013-2014). These high poverty schools enrolled 107,000 students that school year (the last year that all Virginia schools reported information on students qualifying for free or reduced price lunch).

High poverty schools are located all across the state, although they are most concentrated in the Greater Richmond and Hampton Roads regions - two areas of the state with high percentages of Virginia's Black population. Richmond City has the most of any division with 29, and almost two-thirds (63%) of students in the division are enrolled in one of these high poverty schools. Other divisions with many high poverty schools include Norfolk (20 high poverty schools), Roanoke City (12), Prince William (11), Newport News (11), Danville (10), Hampton (8), and Henrico (8).

In Petersburg, almost all of their schools (7 out of their 8) met the criteria for high poverty in the 2013-2014 school year. That's the same number of high poverty schools as Fairfax County - where 7 out of almost 200 schools were high poverty.

Among those enrolled in high poverty schools, 83 percent are students of color, with Black students (60 percent) and Hispanic students (18 percent) as the largest racial/ethnic groups. White students made up only 17 percent of the students in high poverty schools, while they represented over half (52 percent) of students enrolled in Virginia's public schools that year. About one out of every six students of color (15 percent) in Virginia attended a high-poverty school in the 2013-2014 school year, as did more than one out of every five (22 percent) of Black students. In contrast, only three out of one hundred White students (3 percent) attended a high poverty school that year.

And, it's not just the overall number of students in high poverty schools that's increasing, the percentage of students in a high poverty school is increasing too - meaning students are increasingly likely to be in a school of concentrated poverty. The percentage of students in a high poverty school more than doubled from 2003-2004 to 2013-2014 increasing from 3.9 percent up to 8.5 percent of students. This increase is particularly noticeable for Black students in Virginia. Only one in 10 Black students (10 percent) attended a high poverty school in 2002-2003, yet a little over ten years later that percentage has grown to over one out of every five Black students (22 percent).

The increasing economic segregation in Virginia schools mirrors a national trend of rising residential segregation in neighborhoods across the country. As income inequality grows, it allows high income families to sort themselves into higher cost neighborhoods. Nationwide, this has resulted in the rate of high income families that live in predominantly high income neighborhoods doubling from 1980 to 2010. In Virginia, where cities are independent of their surrounding counties, this can often take the form of families moving to suburban communities in a surrounding or nearby county. For example, stark differences in income and poverty can be seen across school division lines in places like Richmond City and Chesterfield and Henrico counties or Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
How to Level the Playing Field
State and local leaders need to take decisive action if they are going to improve resources and opportunities for students in high poverty schools and ensure all Virginia's students can succeed in the classroom and chase their career ambitions.
Targeted State Financial Support
One of the tools the state has available is a funding program called the At-Risk Add-On. This program targets additional state assistance to school divisions based on their concentration of students eligible for free lunch. These funds can be used by schools to offer competitive salaries so they can attract and retain teachers or to provide additional instruction for struggling students.

The state should boost support for the At-Risk Add-On to increase resources to high-poverty school divisions and put us more in line with other states. This could be achieved by increasing the per student weight that is attached to students from low-income families. Currently, the state provides 1 to 13 percent more for each low-income student, with school divisions with higher concentrations of poverty getting more and divisions with lower concentrations getting less. To put us more in line with other states, we should increase this program up to 1 to 25 percent more per low-income student. Making this adjustment would almost double the state's add-on funding, increasing state support by a total of $84 million dollars a year.

Virginia should also examine how it funds schools more broadly. Many states have commissioned cost studies to determine how much more needs to be allocated to give all students similar educational opportunities. Virginia should review the additional cost of educating low-income students, too.

This is needed because the research shows money has the largest impact in education when it's directed to high-poverty areas. Several recent studies show that increased K-12 funding in many states during the 1970s through 2000s resulted in notably improved achievement by low-income students. Sustained investment in K-12 schools has been shown to improve children's performance in the classroom and increase their future earnings, with students from low income families showing more pronounced benefits. For example, a recent study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics shows that when increases are sustained over a 12 year period, students are more likely to complete high school, their average adult wages goes up, and the likelihood that they'll be living in poverty goes down.
Local Enrollment Policies
School leaders need to promote enrollment policies that encourage balanced and diverse public schools. They can do this by implementing controlled choice enrollment where parents select the public school in their division that they would like their child to attend, and divisions balance these choices with diversity factors like the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunch. The goal is to simultaneously promote choice and diversity. This strategy could be particularly effective at increasing diversity in public schools in the Greater Richmond area, if it is done regionally with the city and suburbs partnering together.

Free transportation for students is a necessary feature within these programs, since many students do not have access to transportation and may not choose to attend the closest school. Without free transportation, choice is only really given to those that can afford it. For example, 17 percent of households in Richmond City and 13 percent of Norfolk households do not have an available vehicle. In addition, it's important that schools undertake extensive outreach to the community to raise awareness among parents and students about this program and to ensure that all families who are interested are able to participate.

State leaders could help promote these practices by offering planning and implementation grants to interested school divisions.

School districts around the country have implemented versions of controlled-choice and they have been effective at increasing diversity in public schools. For example, the merged city-suburban school district of Louisville and Jefferson County in Kentucky started controlled choice in the 1990's allowing students to transfer out of neighborhood schools so that all schools would enroll a student body between 15 - 50 percent Black - about 15 percentage points above or below the overall enrollment of Black students in the district. The school district has been able to meet diversity goals for the vast majority of its schools while receiving broad support from parents and students. A 2011 survey found that nine out of ten parents agreeing that school district's guidelines should "ensure that students learn with students from different races and socioeconomic backgrounds."
Private School Options
In contrast, state and local leaders should be skeptical of solutions that seek to redirect funds for public education to private schools through private school vouchers or educational savings accounts. There is little evidence that private school vouchers improve student achievement, with a large portion of the most rigorous studies finding no statistically significant effect for participating students and a recent study finding negative impacts.

Private school vouchers and educational savings accounts can be particularly harmful if they are designed in ways that exclude students from low income families. For example, in many programs, the dollar value of the voucher falls far below private school tuition costs, and when you factor in additional costs like transportation and uniforms, it effectively excludes students from low-income families. At the same time, not all programs target funds to students from low-income families or with special education needs. The result is a public subsidy to families who can already afford the majority of private school costs at the exclusion of those who can't. That's a recipe for making the challenges of high poverty schools worse, not better.
Conclusion
All Virginia students deserve a high quality education and the opportunity to chase their career ambitions. Yet, an increasing number of students, and students of color in particular, find themselves in under-resourced schools with inexperienced instructors, limited coursework, and fewer instructional resources.

By allowing these disparities to continue and even worsen, we are creating barriers for striving students that will affect the opportunities available to them for the rest of their lives - and will affect their ability to contribute to their own success and to their communities in the future. By improving funding and increasing school diversity, we can take down those barriers and start to give everyone a fair shot at the life they want to live.
Definitions of Terms Used in this Report
High poverty school - Schools where 75 percent or more of the students qualify for free or reduced price lunch - a family income below $43,568 for a family of four in 2013-2014. Low poverty school - Schools where 25 percent or less of the students qualify for free or reduced price lunch in 2013-2014 school year. Methodology Notes
The analysis includes 1,833 public schools across the state. The list is limited to those public schools with information available in VDOE student enrollment data, VDOE free and reduced lunch data, and Office of Civil Rights (OCR) Civil Rights Data Collection for 2013-2014. This excludes some schools identified by VDOE as operating in Virginia. Notable exclusions include Virginia's academic-year governor's schools. The ethnic category Hispanic is used, rather than Latino because that is the classification used by VDOE. Data Sources
Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) Free and Reduced Price Lunch Eligibility Report, VDOE Fall Membership data, VDOE Cohort Reports for 2002-2003 and 2013-2014 and the US Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) Educational Equity Report for 2013-2014.
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Unequal Opportunities: Fewer Resources, Worse Outcomes for Students in Schools with Concentrated Poverty

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Persistent gaps in test scores and college enrollment between students from low income families and other more financially secure students are well documented, as are the challenges schools face in trying to improve student outcomes. Too often, these disparities are seen as inevitable and the challenges insurmountable.