Health Problems Fuel Achievement Gaps, Study Says

Lucas Crossing Elementary school student Charnae Thomas, 8, blows into a spirometer held by a nurse on the Healthy Kids Express Asthma Program bus in Bel Nor, Mo., last year. The service is part of a mobile asthma clinic, run by St. Louis Children’s Hospital, that travels to 13 elementary schools around St. Louis to test children for the lung disorder as well as check in with those who have already been diagnosed.
—Christian Gooden/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

—Christian Gooden/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Debra Viadero

If educators and federal officials are serious about closing academic-achievement gaps, they need to better coordinate efforts to address the health disparities that impede learning for students from disadvantaged groups, according to a study released last week .

“At the national level, we’re on the verge of investing billions in our educational system, and the return on those investments is going to be jeopardized unless these health issues are addressed in a much more cogent way,” said the study’s author, Charles E. Basch, a professor of health and education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

For his study, Mr. Basch reviewed more than 300 studies in education, psychology, health, and other areas, looking for health disparities that would provide strategic leverage points...