Report:�More students getting free breakfast - CNN.com: WASHINGTON (AP) -- Students from low-income families are eating more free and reduced-price breakfasts at school, an anti-hunger group said Thursday.
The federal breakfast program feeds only two in five who need it. Still, it reached a record 7.7 million low-income children in the 2005-2006 school year, according to a report from the Food Research and Action Center.
New Mexico posted the biggest increase, with 58 children getting breakfast for every 100 getting free and reduced-price lunches, up from 53 a year earlier.
State officials there spent nearly half a million dollars to boost breakfast participation in schools struggling to meet standards under President Bush's No Child Left Behind program, said James Weill, the center's president.
Kids learn better when they're not hungry, Weill said.
'It's not a solution to the problems in America's schools, but it's the fastest, easiest, cheapest way of boosting school performance that we have,' he said. 'It's the closest thing schools have to a magic bullet.'
New Mexico moved to second place in the rate of participation, behind West Virginia and ahead of South Carolina, Kentucky, Oregon, Vermont, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi.
States with the lowest participation rates were Pennsylvania, Nebraska, New Jersey, Colorado, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Alaska, Utah, Illinois and Wisconsin.
