As the previous post noted, the Trump administration wants to eliminate the after school program, because it doesn’t raise test scores. Budget director Mick Mulvaney said the same thing about feeding children: it doesn’t raise their test scores, so why pay for it?
Peter Greene was appalled. Is that the reason we feed children? To raise their test scores?
“Well, we’ve all seen it by now:
“There is no evidence that food helps raise test scores….
“Reformsters, this is at least partly on you. This is the logical extension of the idea that only hard “evidence” matters, and only if it is evidence that test scores go up. We’ve dumped play, understanding of child development, and a whole bunch of not-reading-and-math classes because nobody can prove they help raise test scores to the satisfaction of various reformsters. It was only a matter of time until some literal-minded shallow-thinking functionary decided that there was no clear linkage between food and test scores…
“Meanwhile, I suppose we could conduct a study that establishes that students who have actually starved to death get lower results on standardized tests. And then we could work out the increments for exactly how much food is useful for getting test results. It may be that just some bread and water are all that’s necessary (crusts only). Maybe just one bowl of gruel a day.
“Lord knows we don’t want to waste money feeding hungry children if we’re not going to get decent test scores in return. You are never too young to start understanding that if you choose to be poor, you’ll have to earn whatever scraps your betters decide you deserve.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Of course, anyone who has ever been in a classroom knows full well that one cannot teach a hungry child…..
This reminds me of the comparisons possible as a George Carlin routine: For one commonly advertised dog food he came up with “Look how much friskier the Alpo dog is than the dead dog of there.”
“Why feed the hungry?”
It’s true that Mother Theresa
Never raised the score
On PARCC or on the PISA
So, why should I say more?
This is the problem with non-educators taking over education. They don’t really know a thing about students, teaching or learning. I taught very poor ELLs from some of the poorest countries on earth, and I know better. Any teacher that has taught poor, hungry children can tell you that hungry children cannot concentrate on learning. This is a validated fact that when primary needs are not met, individuals cannot function and attend to secondary needs like learning. Moreover, traumatized children cannot function like middle class students, no matter what algorithm they apply. What educators and students do not need is to be told what to do by assorted business people, economists and statisticians. Their assumptions and assertions are false, no matter how many numbers they crunch and how loudly they proclaim their “results.” It is sad that these false prophets have the ear of policymakers.
Most economists are mathturbators.
The only thing they know how to do is diddle their big data until they reach a scoregasm .
to justify rape and robbery.
“Economathtricks”
I love to diddle data
On middle class and poor
There’s really nothing greata
It’s what I’m living for
Economathtricks is
The method that I use
Tain’t nothing quite like this
Statistical abuse
Poverty and hunger/lack of proper nutrition often go hand-in-hand, and there are international test results that revealed in every country that children living in poverty do poorly on standardized tests.
“There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country.”
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
But the malignant narcissist’s (MN) minions ignore any facts that do not support their agenda, and what is that agenda besides making more money?
If the MN’s Trumpsters want to get rid of the social safety net that supports people at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, starve them to death; let they die off.
Why did Bill Gates leave his face-to-face with MN and declare that Trump was the next JFK?
A one-word answer: Eugenics, the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.
Through MN, the Nazis, by any other name, are back.
Our poor students do better than most of the other poor students in the world. If we allow them to lose access to public education, this will no longer be the case. As one conservative politician once said, “Our poor are the envy of the poor around the world.”
Yes, and that Stanford study revealed that fact that our poor students do much better than the rest of the world’s poor children.
Student lethargy and low scores? Stop coddling them by feeding them lunch. About time somebody called out the elephant in the room.
TC,
If their scores don’t go up, don’t let them have breakfast or dinner either. That’s motivational!
Diane,
Mulvaney and his staff needs some better oppositional research…
As noted in the Chicago Tribune “What children eat does make a difference, especially in school, reports a study published last year in the Journal of School Health, a journal published on behalf of the American School Health Association.”
To establish a link between diet and academic performance, University of Alberta (Canada) researchers evaluated the lifestyle and performance of some 5,000 children. Students who ate an adequate amount of fruit, vegetables, protein and fiber, with less calorie intake from fat, did better on their literacy tests than those eating foods high in salt and saturated fat.
While a healthy diet is generally assumed to be important for good school performance, there has actually been little research on this topic. To date, most research on diet and school performance has focused on the importance of eating breakfast, as well as the ill effects of hunger and malnutrition.
The study looked at 4,589 fifth-graders participating in the Children’s Lifestyle and School-performance Study, 875 (19.1 percent) of whom had failed an elementary literacy assessment.
The better a student’s eating the less likely he or she was to have failed the test, the researchers found, even after they adjusted the data for the effects of parental income and education, school, and sex.
This study demonstrates the importance of overall diet quality to academic performance and gives emphasis to the importance of children’s nutrition not only at breakfast but throughout the day.
Start them off with a nutritious breakfast and pack them a health-promoting lunch consisting of whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables and protein to ensure they obtain the daily recommended intake of vitamins and minerals.
“Start them off with a nutritious breakfast and pack them a health-promoting lunch consisting of whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables and protein to ensure they obtain the daily recommended intake of vitamins and minerals.” Yes, I agree that is the ideal, whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables. But poor people often live in food deserts in which buying fresh fruits and vegetables is not even an option and if they are available, are prohibitively expensive. They may have to travel miles to get fresh fruits and vegetables which is an other expense for them. Fast foods and sodas are much cheaper and much more available and ubiquitous, unfortunately. Poor people may not even have the room or proper refrigeration for the fresh fruits and veggies.
I knew there had to be research out there supporting good nutrition as a factor in scores. I remember handing out packets of raisins before standardized testing years ago because there was research that raisins sharpened thought processes. Food is a basic need. A hungry child cannot focus if the need is not met. Next question: have we proof that room temperature affects scores? Maybe we don’t need heating or cooling systems?!
LP, I remember in the late 70s teachers in a manipulatives-oriented primary program handed out boxes of raisins when kids couldn’t use counters during standardized test. 🙂
The overselling of scores on standardized tests as the be all and end all of education continues to do serious damage to the health, wellbeing, and general knowledge of our students.
These scores are properly labeled “Weapons of Math Destruction” (WMD). That is the main title of a best selling book by Cathy O’Neal. The subtitle of the book is “How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.”
The book earns praise from this reviewer at Scientific American. In the book, one of her examples of damage from a WMD is teacher evaluation, specifically VAM. In this brief review of O’Neal’s book, you get a sense of the author’s background. She also has a blog: mathbabe.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/review-weapons-of-math-destruction/
Republicans are incapable of seeing any virtue in a social safety net for children or families having a very hard time.
WELL, this is really nuts. Only crazy people would would think nutrition doesn’t matter. The GOP has flown into the “coo coo” bird’s nest.
Get those crazy people out now. IMPEACH! Then give them one teeny “hardtack” and one cup of water per day.
I have never heard anything more CRAZY and totally mean. Guess these Dump supporters like what Hitler did to the Jewish people…that’s how hateful and ignorant they are.
I recall research out of Israel in the early 90s which indicated that children who were given a cookie before taking a test performed better on the tests. I remember thinking at the time, “Of course, but why do test scores mean so much in that country?” This was before the deluge of high-stakes testing in the US. Silly me.
Back to the past.
Not to mention:
I wonder what Charles Dickens would be writing now if he was still alive?
Please sir, I want some more.
There’s a place in Dante’s Inferno for people with a heartless soul.
Perhaps the Legislators should read Golding’s Lord of the Flies to remind themselves they don’t live on a lawless island.
I also recommend Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Only vicious scavangers would agree about eating ones young as a mode of survival.
Of course, some of our lawmakers continually demonstrate a total disregard for life – not just with our students, but also with our environment, let alone any thought of human kindness towards those less fortunate – American, Immigrant, or Refugee.
They make Scrooge look like a philanthropist.
The irony here is that a large number of these lawmakers are also supposedly “pro-life” and are opposed to a woman’s right to choose.
Well, they are only “pro-life” for fetuses. Once you’re born, however, tough, you’re on your own, kid.
Perhaps you haven’t heard of the newest level in Dante’s hell:
Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution* upon their passing from this realm.
*Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
IMHO, we cannot ignore the fact that people reap what they sow. We cannot fathom and comprehend the chain of all intentional/accidental cause and effect in actions from people’s many ignorant lives on earth.
However, the golden rule is that we always alleviate the sufferance in the unfortunate unconditionally.
Specifically and naturally, we are not born with equality in three dimensions of body, mind and spirit. But we are related to one another in HUMANITY’s bond.
Being as educators, we should guide both civilized and savage learners, as well as both rich and poor citizens HOW TO compensate and be benefited to one another in harmonious way of life – a loving attitude in sharing, caring and compassionate human life.
Greed is the crucial force that destroys humanity. Hopefully, people will recognize this and educators will educate and cultivate learners to stay away from greed in their early learning years. Back2basic
I am in favor of children eating with or without standardized test score growth.
Children need to learn the importance of personal responsibility and making good choices, and poor children especially need to be shown the folly of choosing the wrong parents.
No excuses.
I am in favor of children eating standardized tests.
Now there’s an idea, Poet! They could write the questions on a big pizza crust using cheese and pizza sauce. Or on a plate using alphabet pasta with sauce for the questions. For dessert, a large cookie with the questions in icing. Then the kids could eat the tests, and also get fed at the same time. A win-win for the kids!
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Kids Who Suffer Hunger In First Years Lag Behind Their Peers In School
RHITU CHATTERJEE March 23-2017
A new study shows that when infants and young children grow up in households without enough to eat, they are more likely to perform poorly at school years later.
Daniel Fishel for NPR
Growing up in a hungry household in the first couple of years of life can hurt how well a child performs in school years later, according to a new study.
An estimated 13.1 million children live in homes with insufficient food, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Many of those children experience hunger during their first few years of life, or their parents are hungry and stressed out about food during those years – the most crucial time for a child’s development.
The new study, published in the latest issue of the journal Child Development, suggests that such early experience of hunger in the family is likely to make those children less ready for kindergarten than their classmates who came from homes with enough to eat. It shows that kids who experienced food insecurity in their first five years of life are more likely to be lagging behind in social, emotional and to some degree, cognitive skills when they begin kindergarten.
And many previous studies have shown “that kids who enter the kindergarten door behind, tend to stay behind. They do not catch up,” says Anna Johnson, a psychologist and an author of the new study.
Johnson and her colleague used data from an older study by the U.S. Department of Education conducted between 2000 and 2006, which followed about 10,700 children born in low-income households in 2000. It surveyed the parents of these children on various aspects of their lives, including the quantity and quality of food in their households.
Johnson says surveyors asked parents a range of questions that are part of a standardized USDA measure for food security, like, “In the last 12 months, did you worry your food would run out before you could buy more? In the last 12 months, could you afford to eat balanced meals? In the last 12 months, were you ever hungry because there wasn’t enough food?”
The surveyors collected the data at different time points in the children’s lives: When they were 9 months old, 2 years old and when they were in preschool. When the children started kindergarten, the scientists tested the kids on their math and reading skills (a measure of their cognitive development). They also worked with the kids’ teachers to assess their ability to pay attention in class, their tendencies to throw tantrums or be hyperactive, and their eagerness to learn (all measures for emotional and social skills).
Analyzing this data, Johnson found that early experience of high levels of hunger in the household strongly correlated with poor performance in kindergarten. And the younger the children were when the family struggled with hunger, the stronger the effect on their performance once they started school.
In other words, Johnson says, “When children were 9 months old, those who experienced food insecurity were more likely five years later, in kindergarten, to have lower reading and math scores than similar low-income 9-month-olds who didn’t experience food insecurity.” They were also more likely to be hyperactive and throw tantrums in the classroom.
Growing up in a hungry family at age 2 had a similarly strong negative effect on children’s social, emotional and cognitive abilities in kindergarten. Hunger experienced at preschool also seemed to affect reading scores and how the children approached learning, but the overall effects were weaker than food deprivation at earlier ages.
“Preschoolers at least are getting some access to food in their preschool classrooms if they go to preschools, or their child care centers,” says Johnson. Little babies and toddlers, on the other hand, don’t have this option.
However, these effects aren’t necessarily because the children themselves went hungry. They could also be an indirect result of parents being hungry, which also affects a child’s development, says Johnson.
Previous research shows that when parents are hungry, they tend to “be irritable, harsh and impatient with their children,” she says. They can also be distracted or depressed. And irritable, distracted and depressed parents engage less with their children.
“They’re not playing games with the children, they’re not getting down to their levels and playing a puzzle and talking about colors, or holding the child in their lap and tickling their feet and singing songs to them,” she says. “All of these things we know to be important for supporting early [brain] development.”
“The findings from the study weren’t surprising, in the sense that they’re consistent with previous research,” says John Cook, the lead scientist at Boston Medical Center’s Children’s Health Watch, a research group that monitors the effects of economic condition and public policies on the health of very young kids. A growing number of studies in neuroscience and social science show that hunger experienced early in life can have serious consequences for a child’s development.
Cook says the strength of the new study is in showing how hunger during specific times in infancy and early childhood can result in subtle but significant differences in learning abilities later in childhood.
“It really highlights the range of effects that food insecurity can have on a child’s readiness to learn, which then sets the tone for their academic attainment, essentially for the rest of their school years,” Cook says.
The findings further reinforce the importance of food assistance programs like SNAP, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Food and Nutrition Service, says Cook. “Those programs have been proven to be very effective in proving both the food security and the health of school children and enabling them to go to school ready to learn,” he says.
And making sure kids get enough to eat pays societal dividends in the long run, he says, because hunger experienced early in life can really set the trajectory for a child’s “ability to compete in the workforce and to earn enough to be a fully functional member of society.”
Sounds like carbs!