School Poverty by State: Free-Lunch Eligibility (NCES)
Free-lunch eligibility, the federal indicator of school poverty, ranges from a state average of 79.2% in Nevada to 19.4% in New Hampshire, against a national enrollment-weighted average of 49.2%. PlainSchools ranks all 43 reporting state systems from official NCES data.
Research period:
Key finding
Across the 79,573 US public schools that report free-lunch data to the federal Common Core of Data, the enrollment-weighted average is 49.2% of students eligible for free meals, roughly half of all public-school students. State averages span a wide range.
Economic need is highest on average in Nevada, where 79.2% of students qualify for free meals, and lowest in New Hampshire, at 19.4%. Free-lunch eligibility is an indicator of household income, not of school quality.
Research question
What share of US public-school students are eligible for free meals (the standard federal proxy for school poverty), and how much does it differ by state? Across the 43 state systems that report school-level data, what is the enrollment-weighted average, and where is economic need highest and lowest?
Methodology
For each state we take every school's free-lunch eligibility share from the NCES Common Core of Data and average it, weighting each school by its enrollment. Enrollment weighting means the figure reflects the share of free-lunch-eligible students the typical student sits alongside, rather than the average across schools of all sizes. States with fewer than 20 reporting schools are excluded, and a small number of schools with implausible values are filtered out.
Free-lunch eligibility is the standard federal proxy for school poverty. It is an income-eligibility measure, not a direct poverty rate. Eight states do not report school-level free-lunch counts in this vintage (see the limitations below). Figures are recomputed live from the database on every request, so nothing here is hand-entered.
See the methodology page for source vintage and full details.
States with the highest school poverty
Top 10 by enrollment-weighted free-lunch eligibility (NCES CCD)
All 43 reporting state systems, ranked
Enrollment-weighted free-lunch eligibility, highest first. Every state links to its full profile; figures update with each NCES release.
| # | State | Free-lunch eligible | Schools reporting |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nevada | 79.2% | 708 |
| 2 | New Mexico | 75.6% | 849 |
| 3 | Mississippi | 73.7% | 876 |
| 4 | South Carolina | 67.0% | 1,187 |
| 5 | North Carolina | 60.1% | 2,573 |
| 6 | Louisiana | 58.4% | 1,326 |
| 7 | Texas | 58.1% | 8,591 |
| 8 | Pennsylvania | 55.3% | 2,812 |
| 9 | Alabama | 55.0% | 1,364 |
| 10 | Kentucky | 54.5% | 1,359 |
| 11 | New York | 54.4% | 4,535 |
| 12 | Arkansas | 53.8% | 1,065 |
| 13 | Georgia | 53.8% | 2,297 |
| 14 | California | 52.2% | 9,895 |
| 15 | Virginia | 50.8% | 1,746 |
| 16 | Oregon | 50.2% | 1,126 |
| 17 | Michigan | 49.4% | 3,355 |
| 18 | Florida | 48.6% | 3,880 |
| 19 | Alaska | 47.0% | 388 |
| 20 | Indiana | 46.6% | 1,862 |
| 21 | Maryland | 46.2% | 1,375 |
| 22 | Arizona | 42.3% | 1,679 |
| 23 | Kansas | 42.1% | 1,288 |
| 24 | Washington | 41.5% | 2,381 |
| 25 | Missouri | 41.2% | 2,282 |
| 26 | Rhode Island | 40.4% | 309 |
| 27 | Hawaii | 36.6% | 295 |
| 28 | Wisconsin | 36.5% | 2,126 |
| 29 | Connecticut | 36.4% | 997 |
| 30 | Iowa | 36.1% | 1,309 |
| 31 | Minnesota | 35.4% | 2,256 |
| 32 | Colorado | 34.9% | 1,745 |
| 33 | Maine | 31.9% | 561 |
| 34 | New Jersey | 31.2% | 2,419 |
| 35 | Nebraska | 29.7% | 828 |
| 36 | Ohio | 28.6% | 2,048 |
| 37 | South Dakota | 26.6% | 604 |
| 38 | Vermont | 26.1% | 289 |
| 39 | Idaho | 25.9% | 668 |
| 40 | Wyoming | 25.0% | 322 |
| 41 | North Dakota | 24.5% | 458 |
| 42 | Utah | 23.5% | 1,044 |
| 43 | New Hampshire | 19.4% | 496 |
Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data; free-lunch eligibility from the USDA National School Lunch Program. State averages computed by PlainSchools by enrollment-weighting school free-lunch shares. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data; free-lunch eligibility from the USDA National School Lunch Program. State averages computed by PlainSchools by enrollment-weighting school free-lunch shares.
What the data shows
School poverty is concentrated, and it varies widely by state
In the highest-need state systems, led by Nevada at 79.2%, a large majority of students qualify for free meals; in the lowest, including New Hampshire at 19.4%, the share is far smaller. The states with the highest free-lunch eligibility tend to be in the South and Southwest, where median household incomes are lower; the lowest tend to be wealthier states in the Northeast and Mountain West. About half of all US public-school students are eligible nationally.
Poverty is an input, not a verdict
Free-lunch eligibility signals the economic context a school works in, not how good it is. High-poverty schools often face steeper challenges, and federal Title I funding is targeted toward them, but many post strong results. Read this as a measure of the community a school serves, not of the school itself.
Why this matters
Economic need shapes the resources a school can draw on, the programs families can access, and the funding a district receives. It is one of the things families weigh alongside the enrollment, class size, and program data on each profile. Use each state, district, and school page to see how local free-lunch eligibility compares.
What this analysis cannot tell us
This is the share of students eligible for free school meals under the federal National School Lunch Program, as reported to the NCES Common Core of Data, aggregated to the state by weighting each school by its enrollment. Free-lunch eligibility is the standard proxy for school poverty, but it is an income-eligibility threshold, not a direct poverty rate, and it does not capture families just above the cutoff. Eight state systems (Illinois, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Montana, Delaware, and the District of Columbia) do not report school-level free-lunch counts in this NCES vintage, often because they use the Community Eligibility Provision or direct certification, which provide free meals to all students without collecting individual applications; those states are excluded here rather than shown as zero. The figure is an indicator of economic need, not a measure of school quality: a higher-poverty school is not a worse school, and many high-poverty schools post strong results.
States with the lowest school poverty
The 10 reporting states with the lowest enrollment-weighted free-lunch eligibility (NCES CCD)
Sources
- U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (free-lunch eligibility, USDA National School Lunch Program): https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/
Cite this analysis
PlainSchools. (2026). School Poverty by State: Free-Lunch Eligibility (NCES). https://plainschools.com/research/school-poverty-by-state/