we have seen some schools claiming they are showing improvement in educating students on free or reduced lunch, the standard measure used for children in poverty.
There's something to remember.
First, school performance is highly correlated with family economics and education (children of graduate students qualify as poor but that is offset by parental education0
Second, we have seen increasing numbers of students going on to free and reduced lunch as result of the extended recession - many families have even run out of unemployment benefits. The children of such families were not RAISED in poverty but now live in poverty, so they tend to retain the academic performance of the economic class in which they live.
So be careful about claims made by some about how well they are doing educating poor kids. They may just have seen the number of poor kids increase as families continue to slide downward from the middle class.
Just saying . . .