Longitudinal Associations of Incarceration of Biological Parents and Youth School Attendance

Background: Youth in foster care with an incarcerated parent are a particularly vulnerable group based on their likelihood of experiencing disadvantages such as academic failure (Wakefield & Uggen, 2010). Foster youth may experience an increase in school absenteeism compared to children not in care (Stone, 2006), and absenteeism is associated with worse academic performance (Morrissey, Hutchinson, & Winsler, 2014). Youth in care who have an incarcerated parent may be particularly vulnerable to high rates of school absenteeism based on the increased likelihood of experiencing previous disadvantage (Arditti, 2012). The current study asked the question: is having an incarcerated parent related to foster youth’s school attendance? This question was explored using a longitudinal secondary dataset of youth in foster care and state educational administrative data.

 

Methods: Quantitative data were gathered from a metropolitan Oregon sample of sibling dyads in foster care, of which 88 individuals (27%) reported having at least one incarcerated parent through the Essential Youth Experiences 2 questionnaire (EYE2, Miller et al., 2011). The EYE2 asked questions such as “has you biological mother, father, or caregiver, ever been incarcerated?” For this subsample, 52 youth identified as female (59%) and 38 youth identified as non-white (43%). Attendance data were collected by the ODE over a two year period and measured as the rate of days missing from school divided by the total days of school possible (M = 93.9, SD = 6.5 at baseline). A benchmark of attendance, measured by having a child present for 90% or more school days in a school year, was also used to estimate odds ratios. This benchmark represents if children are to be considered “chronically absent” as indicated by 10% or more school days missing per school year. Multiple linear regressions were estimated with robust standard errors and a cluster variable to indicate sibling dyads to help account for non-independence of observations.

 

Results: Results indicated that youth with an incarcerated parent had lower attendance rates at Wave 1 (b=-2.36, p=.01) and Wave 2 of data collection (b=-1.67, p=.05). Maternal incarceration was associated with lower attendance rates at Wave 2 (b=-3.12, p=.03) and Wave 3 (b=-4.49, p=.03) of data collection. Additionally, having an incarcerated parent increased a youth’s odds of not meeting the benchmark at Wave 1 (OR = 2.26, p = 0.011). Overall, youth with an incarcerated father were much more likely to fall below the attendance benchmark (OR = 3.20, p = 0.031).

 

Implications: These results indicate that foster youth with an incarcerated parent had worse attendance rates and lower odds of meeting school attendance benchmarks compared to other youth in care. This is consistent with what we would expect (Stone, 2006), but also highlights an important subgroup of children that child welfare and schools systems should be focused on. Missed learning days are clearly linked to poorer academic outcomes (Morrissey et al., 2014). Future research should focus on how to better serve this subgroup of vulnerable children.