Higher percentages of fourth-graders who were eligible for the National School Lunch Program performed at or above Basic and at or above Proficient in 2009 than in 1998, but differences in comparison to 2007 were not statistically significant.
Because of the improved quality of the data on students' eligibility for NSLP, the percentage of students for whom information was not available has decreased compared to the percentages reported prior to the 2003 assessment. See the proportion of students in each category in the NAEP Data Explorer.