Study Finds – Students From Struggling Economic Backgrounds Sent Home With Food For The Weekend Have Improved Test Scores
Education
Michael Kurtz, Lycoming College
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
When food banks work with schools to send children home with a backpack full of food over the weekend, they do better on reading and math tests, I found in a recent study. These effects are strongest for younger and low-performing students.
In the peer-reviewed study published in December 2020, my co-authors – Karen Conway and Robert Mohr – and I explored how weekend feeding programs, also known as “backpack” programs, affected end-of-grade tests in reading and math for third, fourth and fifth graders in North Carolina. These types of programs began independently in 1995 in a single school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Since then, Feeding America – a national network of...