What? Sen. Cory Booker tweets half of US students living in poverty

http://twitter.com/#!/mesquito84/status/422855662117195776

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) seems to have taken away a single line from a USA Today opinion piece on the “poverty crisis” in America’s schools: “Half of students in poverty.”

https://twitter.com/CoryBooker/status/422829214967300096

http://twitter.com/#!/ParisParamus/status/422863670230540288

Many are questioning Booker’s math, however. Oliver Thomas, who wrote the USA Today piece, notes that “in Finland, the child poverty rate is about 5%. In the U.S., the rate is almost five times as high.” That would make the U.S. child poverty rate…

http://twitter.com/#!/cathybuffaloe/status/422833398495711232
http://twitter.com/#!/Texas_Frog/status/422834424279863296
http://twitter.com/#!/Crapplefratz/status/422831773525868544

Maybe it was a simple rounding error.

.@ChampionCapua @joelengel @AceofSpadesHQ @CoryBooker
23.1 rounds up to 25.
25 rounds up to 30
30 rounds up to 50.
FIFTY! That's half.— Arthur Kimes (@ComradeArthur) January 13, 2014

http://twitter.com/#!/mattstandeuce/status/422831477714595840

Where, then, did the senator get the idea that half of all students are in poverty? Likely from this subhead later in the piece.

The study cited describes not students in poverty but rather “low income” students, defined as those eligible for free or reduced lunches, and concludes that more than half of students in 17 states qualified as low income. So, what does it take to qualify for a reduced price lunch? The family must have a household income of less than 185 percent of the poverty line.

http://twitter.com/#!/lachlan/status/422832081136152576
http://twitter.com/#!/AG_Conservative/status/422833399472996352
http://twitter.com/#!/AG_Conservative/status/422832665796952064

So, who really believes that a full half of public school students are in poverty?

http://twitter.com/#!/AceofSpadesHQ/status/422829913238810624
http://twitter.com/#!/AceofSpadesHQ/status/422860726105939968
http://twitter.com/#!/AceofSpadesHQ/status/422869604218597376
http://twitter.com/#!/lachlan/status/422865823808888832
http://twitter.com/#!/GregMascera/status/422866824158384128

Why tweet such a misleading figure to your followers, especially if you’re a U.S. senator?

https://twitter.com/cathybuffaloe/status/422834808335523840

Probably for this reason.

http://twitter.com/#!/RedRoof65/status/422834174173532160

Editor’s note: The headline of this piece has been changed to read “students” rather than “children.” Twitchy regrets the error.