As California educators struggle to boost student achievement across economic lines, the teeth of poor children are holding them back.
Hundreds of thousands of low-income children suffering from dental disease, some with teeth rotted to the gum line, are presenting California school districts with a widespread public health problem.
Increasingly, dental health advocates are looking to schools to help solve the crisis. Several school districts, including Oakland Unified, are running innovative programs to provide dental care at no cost to students. Third-party insurers are billed whenever possible, but insurance is not a prerequisite for treatment.
Meanwhile, a full-service dental clinic opened last year at Peres Elementary School in Richmond's Iron Triangle neighborhood. The clinic offers everything from applying resin sealant to kids' teeth -- a vital preventive measure to stave off cavities and decay -- to fillings and extractions. The West Contra Costa school district hopes to expand the model to other schools.
Dental disease is at "epidemic" levels among California children, according to the U.S. Surgeon General, and low-income children are disproportionately affected. They are 12 times more likely to miss school because of dental problems than children from higher-income families, according to a 2008 report by the Healthy States Initiative, a