As National School Lunch Week comes to an end, Congress should celebrate by finally fixing an inequity that leaves hundreds of thousands of children behind: the exclusion of full-time online public school students from the National School Lunch Program.

Right now, more than 347,000 online public school students who would otherwise qualify for free or reduced-price lunch are denied benefits. That is about 57 percent of all virtual public school students nationwide. These are families that meet the same income thresholds as their peers in traditional schools, but they lose access to help just because of where their children attend school.

In some states, the numbers are staggering. In Michigan, more than 70 percent of the state’s full-time online students — 22,000 students — qualified for free lunch benefits but did not receive........

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