Connecticut’s students score well overall on standardized tests. But lower-income minority students in urban areas continue to lag behind their classmates.
Efforts to close Connecticut's largest-in-the-nation achievement gap have mostly been focused in the classroom, with less attention paid to the role of good health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that hunger, physical and emotional abuse, physical inactivity, and obesity are all linked to poor grades.
In Connecticut, several efforts are underway to improve health as a way to close the achievement gap.
Dr. Lisa Honigfeld of the Child Health and Development Institute was a guest onWNPR’sWhere We Live. She said that data from the Early Development Inventory show many children entering kindergarten already delayed.
“Very surprisingly -- and really distressing -- is that we learned only about a third of kindergarteners are deemed ready for school in terms of their socio-emotional competence,” Honigfeld said. “And fewer than half really have the fine motor skills to do school tasks.”
About 20 percent of kids have cognitive problems, and close to a third have socio-emotional or other health issues.
Jodie Mozdzer Gil, who teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University, has researched the link between health and educational outcomes. “We’re seeing things like behavioral issues in preschool,” she said. “In Middletown, they have an issue where a lot of preschoolers are being expelled, because they have such severe behavioral issues.”
But Middletown is working with teachers.
“They’re not looking at these as just kids who are bad,” Mozdzer Gil said. “They’re looking at them as kids who have serious issues, and maybe issues at home. They’re able to come up with strategies to help them deal with those issues they’re having in general, to make them able to then focus in preschool.”
Gil and Honingfeld said that early intervention is key. They urge child health providers to share information with schools as a way to support child development and ultimately improve educational achievement.
