Free and reduced-price lunch in Florida schools
3,857 Florida public schools publish both an enrollment figure and a free or reduced-price lunch count in 2023-24, which is what an eligibility rate needs. The median school's rate is 56.9%, and 617 schools are at or above 75%.
The figures, 2023-24
An eligibility rate is a ratio of two published counts and is computed per school before anything is summarised, so a large school and a small one count once each. Schools missing either field have no rate and are excluded rather than treated as zero.
| State | Florida |
|---|---|
| Schools with a computable rate | 3857 |
| Schools covered here | 3992 |
| Median eligibility rate | 56.9% |
| Schools at or above 75% | 617 |
| Share of covered schools with a ratecalculated | 96.6%schools_with_a_rate / schools_covered_here |
| Share of rated schools at or above 75%calculated | 16.0%schools_at_or_above_three_quarters / schools_with_a_rate |
The twelve largest districts by enrollment
Other statewide answers
- How many public schools are in Florida?
- How many school districts are there in Florida?
- How many students are in Florida public schools?
- How many teachers are in Florida public schools?
- Charter schools in Florida
- Florida school districts by enrollment
Questions
What does free and reduced-price lunch eligibility measure?
It counts students eligible for subsidised meals under the National School Lunch Program. It is widely used as an indicator of student poverty, and it is an eligibility count, not a measure of how many meals were served.
Why do some schools have no rate?
A rate needs both an enrollment figure and a meal-eligibility count. 135 of the schools covered here are missing at least one, usually because NCES withheld it, and they are left out rather than counted as zero.
Is a high rate a statement about a school's quality?
No. It describes the population a school serves, not how well it serves them. Reading it as a quality measure is the most common error made with this field.
Method and sources
Every figure on this page is a census over the 2023-24 Common Core of Data, published by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Each rate is (free lunch + reduced-price lunch) / enrollment for that school, computed from the two published counts. Where the reduced-price count is absent but the free count is published, the reduced count is treated as absent rather than as zero, and the school is excluded. No figure here is imputed, and where a count excludes records the number excluded is on the page.
- NCES CCD LEA Directory 2023-24 (ccd_lea_029_2324_w_1a_073124)
- NCES CCD School Directory 2023-24 (ccd_sch_029_2324_w_1a_073124)
- NCES CCD School Membership 2023-24 (ccd_sch_052_2324_l_1a_073124)