Research and Policy: Lunch, Teeth, Body, and Mind: Children’s Learning and Well-Being

This article explores the research on the relationship between two particular aspects of poverty and school achievement. In particular, it examines research on food insecurity and oral healthcare among elementary-school-age children. The argument here is that these sorts of experiences of children in poverty account for some of the achievement difference between students from low-income homes and those with adequate resources for physical well-being. This fact has significant policy implications, as there are gaps in the ways policymakers engage with data; they often do not attempt to correlate student or school achievement data with material disadvantage like the ones investigated here. Reform efforts in curriculum and instruction would be more fruitful if they were combined with improving children’s overall well-being.