The Education Catalyst

When support data becomes public information, it stops protecting—and starts exposing.

You Don’t Count Money in Public

There’s a reason people are taught:

Don’t count your money in public.

Not because having money is wrong.
Not because you should hide your success.

But because once it’s visible—

someone else can use that information against you.

They can judge you.
They can target you.
They can take advantage of you.

It’s not about shame.

It’s about protection.

Now apply that same logic to schools.

We have built a system where we publicly display:

who has resources
who doesn’t
which communities struggle
which students need support

And then we act surprised when that information gets used in ways it was never intended to be used.

When Help Becomes Exposure

Free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) programs were designed to help.

To make sure kids are fed.
To remove barriers to learning.

But today, that support system is also one of the most widely used public indicators of poverty in education.

The National Center for Education Statistics confirms that FRPL is commonly used to classify schools by poverty level, with millions of students attending schools labeled based on this metric.

What was meant to be private support has become public information.

And once information becomes public, it can be used in ways no one originally intended.

Transparency Was Never Meant for This

Transparency is important.

But we need to be honest about what it was designed to do.

Transparency is supposed to protect the public by holding power accountable.

It should answer questions like:

Who is making decisions?
Who is receiving funding?
Who benefits from contracts?
What are the intentions behind policies?

Transparency should be aimed at:

government leadership
corporate decision-makers
vendors receiving public dollars
organizations influencing public systems

Because those are the entities with power.

But that is not how transparency is being used here.

Instead of exposing power, we are exposing:

students
families
communities

We are publishing indicators of need—

while knowing that information can be used to judge, rank, and make decisions about those same groups.

At the same time, many of the most influential decisions in education—

vendor contracts
technology adoption
policy direction
funding priorities

are far less visible or harder for the public to fully understand.

So we end up with a system where:

the most vulnerable people are the most visible,
and the most powerful systems are the least examined.

That is not transparency.

That is imbalance.

Who Is Actually Using This Data?

We often talk about school data like it stays in schools.

It doesn’t.

Once it is public, it can be accessed and used by:

real estate markets
media outlets
political campaigns
private organizations
outside investors
people making decisions about communities they don’t live in

And here’s the problem:

Those groups are not using the data to help individual students.

They are using it to:

compare
rank
evaluate
decide

Where to invest.
Where to move.
Where to avoid.

When Data Shapes Decisions About Communities

When a school or district is labeled “high poverty,” that label doesn’t stay in an education report.

It travels.

It shows up in conversations like:

“Do we want to move there?”
“Is that a good school?”
“What kind of families live in that area?”

And suddenly, a support system meant to help students eat lunch becomes part of a larger narrative about an entire community.

The Urban Institute has found that FRPL data has become increasingly inconsistent as a measure of economic need, meaning we are not only labeling communities—

we are labeling them based on imperfect data.

But once the label is out there, the damage doesn’t wait for clarification.

When Data Becomes a Map for Decision-Making

Now take this one step further.

Imagine you are a company, developer, or decision-maker looking at public data.

You’re not looking at individual students.

You’re looking at patterns.

You see:

which communities are labeled high poverty
which areas are described as “low performing”
which regions are receiving less investment
which populations are considered less likely to push back

That data starts to function like a map.

Not a map for helping—

but a map for decision-making.

Where to build.
Where to expand.
Where to place infrastructure.
Where resistance might be lower.

No one needs to say it out loud.

The data already tells a story.

And when communities are repeatedly defined by need, deficit, or struggle, it can quietly influence how and where decisions are made—especially when those decisions come from people outside the community.

This doesn’t just apply to one type of project.

It applies to any large-scale decision involving:

land use
infrastructure
development
investment

Because once information is public—

it doesn’t stay in the hands of the people it was meant to help.

Data doesn’t just describe communities—it quietly guides decisions about them.

When Data Shapes How Students Are Seen

This doesn’t just stay at the community level.

It reaches classrooms.

Students in “high poverty” schools are often viewed through a different lens before anyone even meets them.

Lower expectations.
Assumptions about behavior.
Assumptions about family support.

No one says it out loud.

But it shows up in decisions:

placement
discipline
opportunity
support

And over time, those assumptions can shape outcomes.

Not because of who the students are—

but because of how they are perceived.

The Safety Piece No One Talks About

We talk about transparency like it is always a good thing.

But transparency without protection can create risk.

When we publicly map out:

which communities have fewer resources
which students need more support
which schools are struggling

we are creating a blueprint.

And not everyone who accesses that information is using it with good intentions.

Just like you wouldn’t:

post your bank balance publicly
announce where you keep your valuables
leave your doors unlocked

we should be asking:

Why are we publicly displaying information about vulnerable populations without fully considering how it can be used?

Because once that information is out there—

we don’t control who uses it or how.

This Isn’t About Removing Support

Let’s be clear.

Students should be fed.
Families should be supported.
Schools should receive resources.

Data should absolutely be used to:

allocate funding
identify needs
improve systems

But there is a difference between:

using data to help
and
using data in ways that expose

Right now, we are doing both.

And the second one comes with consequences.

The Line We Need to Draw

We have to start asking better questions:

Who benefits from this data being public?
Who is being protected?
Who is being exposed?

Because right now, the answer is uncomfortable.

The people with the least power—

students, families, and communities—

are often the most visible.

Real-World Solutions

Redirect transparency toward power

Make vendor contracts, funding flows, and decision-making processes more visible than student need indicators.

Keep support data internal when possible

Use FRPL and similar data for funding and planning—not as a defining public label.

Limit how poverty indicators are displayed publicly

Reduce the emphasis on deficit-based categorization in public-facing systems.

Add context and protections

If data must be shared, explain limitations and consider how it could be misused.

Prioritize dignity and safety

Every data decision should be filtered through one question:
Does this protect the people it represents?

Call to Action

Ask this:

Are we being transparent about power—or exposing people without it?

Because that is the difference between protection and harm.

Closing

Transparency should protect families.

It should hold systems accountable.

It should shine a light on power—

not on people who need support.

You don’t count your money in public—

because once it’s visible, it can be used against you.

The same principle applies here.

Support should protect.

Data should help.

But when we turn private need into public information,

we stop protecting people—

and start exposing them.

And once that happens,

we don’t get to control what comes next.

In solidarity,
Lyndsay LaBrier
Merchant Ship Collective
The Education Catalyst

References

National Center for Education Statistics. (n.d.). Concentration of public school students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/clb/free-or-reduced-price-lunch

Urban Institute. (2026). How school-reported data on student economic need has become inconsistent—and four better measures. https://www.urban.org