With all the tests that we inflict on the student population these days, you’d think that there’d be some sort of national movement to do some basic physical testing that might be actually useful knowledge to students, teachers and parents. Simple vision and hearing tests would perhaps go a long way to determining if there are physical problems making it difficult for students to adapt to the modern learning environment.
I guess the larger issue is how we as a society don’t quite get that basic preventative health care is a commodity that should be affordable and accessible to all. But back to vision and education, from The Center for Health and Healthcare in Schools:
Some eye care and public health professionals have argued that every child should receive a comprehensive examination by an optometrist or ophthalmologist before school entrance. Other eye care and medical professionals maintain that vision screening is a cost-effective method for identifying those who would benefit from eye exams. These competing recommendations for how best to identify children with vision problems are prompting new research on the costs and benefits of various strategies, including an examination of the impact of untreated vision problems on school performance.
State legislatures, local school districts and federal government agencies have all begun to re-assess the effectiveness of approaches they use to assure that vision problems do not become barriers to healthy child development and academic performance. The goal of this paper is to provide a framework for policy makers, educators, health professionals, and parents to assess the adequacy of the current strategies to find and treat children with vision problems and to suggest future directions.
Key Findings
- Vision problems are common among children. Vision problems affect nearly 13.5 million children. Rates for vision problems increase as children age. Nearly eight percent of young children ages 0 - 5 experience eye problems while a quarter of adolescents 12 - 17 are reported to have eye problems.
- A variety of legislative and regulatory measures have been adopted to address vision problems. Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia either recommend or require vision screening prior to school entry and periodically thereafter. Only one state, Kentucky, mandates comprehensive eye exams prior to school admission.
- Office-based vision screening is the primary means of detecting vision problems among young children. For the majority of children under the age of three, vision screenings, when done, are performed during well-child visits by physicians and their staff. However, one study reported that only 66% of children ages three to five years old in a group of 102 pediatric practices covering 23 states, received vision screenings. No data on office-based vision screenings for older children is available. Health care providers may be missing opportunities to identify vision problems in children during routine visits. It is estimated that only 5-14% of children receive eye exams performed by optometrists or ophthalmologists before school entry.
Read the whole thing.
h/t watchdog
