W. E. B. Dubois states “Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops man.” (1) These two peer-reviewed articles, “Food Deserts and their Relationship with Academic Achievement in School Children” by Seth Edward Frndak and “School Gardens in the City: Does Environmental Equity Help Close the Achievement Gap” by Rashaw Ray, Dana R. Fisher and Carley Fisher-Maltese address an aspect of the environment outside “school house walls” in urban communities: a lack of physical spaces to practice healthy eating and social spaces to increase social and cultural capital. (2) They claim that this aspect of urban communities places the children living there at a disadvantage academically. 

In his article, Frndak determines degree of accessibility to these physical spaces where individuals can practice healthy eating by measure of one’s distance to a supermarket. He labels those regions located at least one mile away from a supermarket as “urban food deserts.” (3) Beyond the decreased food access, food deserts typically lack in produce variety and food quality. Meanwhile, these regions maintain a high density of fast-food restaurants. Together, such conditions of food deserts in urban areas ultimately diminish the fruit and vegetable intake by individuals residing there.

Figure 1: Urban food desert

Frndak dedicates the remainder of his article to discuss the findings of his study of obesity rates and academic achievement in food desert areas. He studied over twenty-two urban districts in New York, obtaining food desert data, student weight statistics, fourth grade achievement scores, demographic information, and school district quality data. While Frndak only corroborated previous findings showed insignificant impact of food deserts on obesity rates (4), he made an unprecedented discovery when it came to the relationship between food deserts and academic achievement in schools.

Initially, Frndak found the proportion of people living in a food desert area to healthy food to be unrelated to the academic achievement scores of that school district. However, after incorporating the socioeconomic status, racial, ethnic and school quality indexes, Frndak was able to conclude the proportion of individuals at low access to be negatively correlated with achievement scores. In other words, because many impoverished individuals lack those assets obtained by most wealth individuals (knowledge of the consequences of an unhealthy diet, ability to spend more on expensive/higher quality food, and access/spending power for transportation), they are unable to combat the challenges presented by a food desert, like academic achievement. Frndak concludes his article by stressing the importance of school programs that work to improve the nutritional intake of school children and therefore to raise test scores as well (5).

Ray, Fisher and Fisher-Maltese promote one way of increasing the fresh fruit and vegetable intake of students located in food deserts: the implementation of school gardens. The authors take their studies a step further than Frndak’s and investigate why the existence of gardens in schools and academic achieve is related to the decline of race and class inequities (6). To do so, the authors utilized fifth graders’ math, reading, and science standardized test scores in city of Washington DC. Ray, Fisher, and Fisher-Maltese began by first confirming that school gardens are more likely to exist in those schools serving a higher percentage of White students and schools serving a lower percentage of students on free and reduced lunch. Secondly, the authors discovered the students in schools with gardens to be more likely to score higher in math, reading, and science test scores in relation to students without access to a school garden (7). While, ultimately, the authors were unable to confirm their hypothesis that school gardens would recede the link between the race and class composition of students and their academic achievements, they were able to reach several unique conclusions regarding the impact of school gardens on students.

Figure 2: Children putting beets from their school garden in Washington DC.

The authors’ research enhances today’s understanding of how best to engage Black and low-income students to consider STEM as potential career paths (8). They also conclude that school gardens serve as plausible gateway for racial/ethnic and low-income students to participate in local environmental and civic activities. This participation may then lead students to join movements, such as the environmental justice movement, and address the inequities that challenge their own neighborhoods. Ray, Fisher, and Fisher-Maltese end their article with these influences of school gardens that extend beyond improving nutritional intake and student achievement, a final attempt to convince their readers of the efficiencies of garden schools, especially in the food deserts described in Frndak’s article.