Since implementing free breakfast in New York City’s classrooms, school breakfast participation has increased from 25 percent to 80 percent, according to a study by New York University’s Institute for Education and Social Policy, which conducts nonpartisan research to help inform policy decisions surrounding U.S. education.
Key findings of the study—published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management—found that students’ participation in the program did not lead to additional weight gain or take away from their instructional time, as some critics feared.
Though prior studies have found an academic benefit to breakfast in the classroom, this study showed the program’s impact on academic achievement to be “small and statistically insignificant,” despite advocates’ hopes for a different outcome.
“When looking at academic achievement and attendance, there are few added benefits of having breakfast in the classroom beyond those already provided by free breakfast,” Sean Corcoran, a co-author of the study, said in a statement. “The policy case for breakfast in the classroom will depend upon reductions in hunger and food insecurity for disadvantaged children, or its longer-term effects.”
The study results come as New York City Public Schools prepares to expand the program to the elementary level by summer 2018.