Below is a transcript of our conversation with Dr. Sharon Kukla-Acevedo
David Nicholas: I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University's students and faculty. This time, we're looking at the connection between nutrition and academic success for our K-12 students. Sharon Kukla-Acevedo, faculty member in the School of Politics, Society, Justice and Public Service at Central Michigan University is looking at the data on this. I asked Doctor Kukla-Acevedo about what we might learn about nutrition and academic success once free meals are provided for every student.
Sharon Kukla-Acevedo: More immediately, what we're going, the benefits that we're going to see from this particular initiative are going to be related to students, test scores, students, attendance rates, graduation rates, college matriculation. So we'll begin to see immediate benefits that are non-economic in nature, but then, looking down the line, you know children who are well fed, not facing hunger as adults tend to have higher college matriculation rates, better labor market outcomes, higher income, better health. And so, it won't be for several years down the road that we will see those economic benefits. But until that point, I believe we'll probably see more in terms of those non-economic benefits.
DN: How long have we been looking at that as a direct tie-in to performance in school?
SKA: Back in the 1980s, public health scholars started looking at this with (um, with) some detail and in the 90s and 2000s, that's when you saw economists and psychologists, nutritionists and education policy scholars, start to look at this. So, it's been several decades now that we've known about this connection between nutrition, high quality nutrition specifically, and academic outcomes.
DN: Do we have a means by which we can track that, that's something that Michigan is or is not as well equipped to do the tracking of this over the long term that you say could be beneficial?
SKA:
There are several states in the US that do have education data tracking systems. That would enable them to track an effort like universal school meals provided and be able to see how that relates to later academic outcomes in labor market outcomes. Unfortunately, Michigan is not yet one of those states. A lot of those states are states that received a race to the top funds under the Obama administration, but Michigan was not one of those states, and so does not have that data tracking system currently.
DN: What would something like that cost in terms of the investment for the state?
SKA: Investment from the state would be probably in the hundreds of millions in in time, and also a concerted effort, a dedicated effort on both sides of the aisle to make something like that happen. But in the absence of that kind of sophisticated data tracking system, there are things that researchers and policy think tanks can do to look at what the effects of something like universal meal system might be. The state of Michigan does collect a lot of data annually on kids, but about the school district level, though not at the kid level but at the school district level. And so, we know a lot about district graduation rates, school graduation rates, resources going into schools, dollars going into schools, and so researchers can use that great data into complete correlational studies to look at what might have been the impact of a universal meal program. And so again, I say it's an issue of priorities and trying to understand where you want to lay that priority because this is a certain policy intervention that has many, many benefits.
DN: There is a bill pending in the Michigan Senate that would make funding for Universal free breakfast and lunch a permanent part of the state budget, Doctor Sharon Kukla Acevedo is on the faculty for CMU School of Politics, Society, Justice, and Public Service. Appreciate your time. Thank you.
SKA: Thank you, David.
