Just back from
three days in California. The highlight
was an early morning visit to the 52nd Street Elementary School in
South L.A. which has 850 students and last October switched to
breakfast-in-the-classroom notwithstanding initial resistance on the part of
teachers and others. Principal Jimenez explained that before
breakfast-in-the-classroom there were 250 children with perfect attendance
records, but that now there are 439 with perfect attendance and the only thing
that’s changed is breakfast. Talk about measureable outcomes!
I had never
before seen “perfect attendance” used as a metric. But I do know that of the
numerous national organizations such as Communities in Schools, America’s
Promise, City Year and College Summit doing heroic work addressing the nation’s
drop-out crisis, all will tell you that attendance is a leading indicator of
graduation rates. In the second grade classroom we visited our recent Deloitte report on the link between school breakfast and academic achievment came to life. @ http://www.nokidhungry.org/pdfs/school-breakfast-white-paper.pdf
