Not a single mention of food insecurity or nutrition in student outcomes, despite the fact that BEFORE the economy went sideways due to this stupid ass war 20% of homes with children were food-insecure. Only the deepest level of reporting from the NYT 🙄
If your hypothesis is that this drop is caused by food insecurity, that wouldn’t explain why the richest schools also saw drops or why the biggest drops have happened in middle income districts.
Something broader is going on, and the fact that the data cuts across geography and class calls for looking at things that affect everyone.
I never said it was the only cause. Ignoring it completely as a cause at all is both unscientific and bad reporting when it affects 1 in 5 households with kids.
I don’t think it’s a compelling narrative, because of the timing. Scores dropped from 2015 to 2019 even as food insecurity continued to go down from its 2008 peak:
And the test scores rebounded somewhat even as food security support was abruptly yanked from the poorest families in the years after COVID, and food insecurity increased while scores rebounded a bit.
And unfortunately, USDA stopped collecting the data in 2025 so we’re gonna be in the dark on the precise numbers and trendlines after 2024, but looking at that chart and comparing it to the literacy/math dropoff in the original article, it’s hard to draw the conclusion from the data that food security played a major role in this trendline.
Not a single mention of food insecurity or nutrition in student outcomes, despite the fact that BEFORE the economy went sideways due to this stupid ass war 20% of homes with children were food-insecure. Only the deepest level of reporting from the NYT 🙄
If your hypothesis is that this drop is caused by food insecurity, that wouldn’t explain why the richest schools also saw drops or why the biggest drops have happened in middle income districts.
Something broader is going on, and the fact that the data cuts across geography and class calls for looking at things that affect everyone.
I never said it was the only cause. Ignoring it completely as a cause at all is both unscientific and bad reporting when it affects 1 in 5 households with kids.
I don’t think it’s a compelling narrative, because of the timing. Scores dropped from 2015 to 2019 even as food insecurity continued to go down from its 2008 peak:
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/food-insecurity-rises-for-the-second-year-in-a-row
And the test scores rebounded somewhat even as food security support was abruptly yanked from the poorest families in the years after COVID, and food insecurity increased while scores rebounded a bit.
And unfortunately, USDA stopped collecting the data in 2025 so we’re gonna be in the dark on the precise numbers and trendlines after 2024, but looking at that chart and comparing it to the literacy/math dropoff in the original article, it’s hard to draw the conclusion from the data that food security played a major role in this trendline.