Children's Test Scores Research Articles

Maternal education and the development of Chinese adolescents

ABSTRACT This paper examines the intergenerational effects of maternal education on adolescents' development in education and health by using data from the China Education Panel Survey. The ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares estimates indicate that maternal education increases both children's cognitive test scores and the probability of being nearsighted and overweight. The net effects of maternal education on the economic well-being of adolescents is inconclusive. We further find that family environment and parenting style are the most relevant mediating mechanisms through which maternal education affects the development of adolescents.

Child bodyweight and human capital: Test scores, teacher assessments and noncognitive skills

This papers adds to the literature on child bodyweight and human capital using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011. We examine how bodyweight is related to both children's test scores and teacher assessment of ability. We find bodyweight has little effect on math or reading for girls, but is negatively related to test scores and teacher assessments in science. Obese boys are found to have lower test scores in math and are assessed more negatively by teachers in all three academic areas. We also examine bodyweight and noncognitive skills, finding negative relationships for both girls and boys. Obesity-related differences in these skills mitigate observed disparities for boys between teacher assessment and test scores in the areas of reading and math but not science. Finally, we explore whether bodyweight differentially affects teacher and parent-assessment of children's noncognitive traits, finding a more negative effect on teacher-assessed skills.

Parental Ethnic Identity and Child Test Scores*

AbstractWe examine the relationship between parental ethnic identity and the test scores of ethnic minority children. We use standard survey measures of the strength of parental identity alongside validated cognitive test scores in a rich British cohort study. We show that children whose mothers report either an adoption or an active rejection of the majority identity tend to score lower in cognitive tests at age 7, compared with those children whose mothers report neutral feelings about the majority identity. We find no consistent differences in test scores according to mothers’ minority identity. Our findings provide no support for education or citizenship policies that promote the adoption of the majority identity or discourage the maintenance of separate identities in ethnic minority communities.

Comparison of Auditory, Language, Memory, and Attention Abilities in Children With and Without Listening Difficulties.

Objectives School-age children with and without parent-reported listening difficulties (LiD) were compared on auditory processing, language, memory, and attention abilities. The objective was to extend what is known so far in the literature about children with LiD by using multiple measures and selective novel measures across the above areas. Design Twenty-six children who were reported by their parents as having LiD and 26 age-matched typically developing children completed clinical tests of auditory processing and multiple measures of language, attention, and memory. All children had normal-range pure-tone hearing thresholds bilaterally. Group differences were examined. Results In addition to significantly poorer speech-perception-in-noise scores, children with LiD had reduced speed and accuracy of word retrieval from long-term memory, poorer short-term memory, sentence recall, and inferencing ability. Statistically significant group differences were of moderate effect size; however, standard test scores of children with LiD were not clinically poor. No statistically significant group differences were observed in attention, working memory capacity, vocabulary, and nonverbal IQ. Conclusions Mild signal-to-noise ratio loss, as reflected by the group mean of children with LiD, supported the children's functional listening problems. In addition, children's relative weakness in select areas of language performance, short-term memory, and long-term memory lexical retrieval speed and accuracy added to previous research on evidence-based areas that need to be evaluated in children with LiD who almost always have heterogenous profiles. Importantly, the functional difficulties faced by children with LiD in relation to their test results indicated, to some extent, that commonly used assessments may not be adequately capturing the children's listening challenges. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12808607.

Child care center quality and early child development

A unique dataset on applications and admissions to child care centers allow us to explore parental preferences for child care center characteristics. We proceed to study how staff qualifications, experience and sickness absence, as well as the proportion of male and immigrant staff, explain the cognitive development of children randomly allocated to child care centers contingent on observable characteristics. Children who receive their first offer of child care enrollment from a center with a high share of male staff, perform better on language tests in their early school years. If the sickness absence is high in the center, child test scores are lower in both language and mathematics.

Prediction of Cognitive Ability With Social Determinants in Children of Low Birth Weight.

Despite strong prevention efforts and advances in neonatal care in recent decades, low birth weight remains a serious public health problem in the United States, and survivors remain at increased risk for lifelong problems including cognitive deficits. Current regional and local strategies for referral often rely on variable thresholds for birth weight and gestational age that may be poor analogues to cognitive risk. Improving early referral criteria offers many benefits, including improved cognitive outcomes for children and improved cost-effectiveness and resource utilization in resource-limited communities. We hypothesized that social determinants measurable at birth or at birth hospital discharge, when combined with birth weight and gestational age, would offer an improvement over birth weight and gestational age alone in predicting cognitive test scores in school-aged children with low birth weight. We conducted a secondary analysis using a birth cohort of children from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. We created a panel of maternal, familial, and community-level social determinant indicators from the data and examined associations with cognitive measures assessed at age of 9 years. The final social determinant model was statistically significant and explained 35% of the total variance in composite test scores. The "standard care" model (birth weight and gestational age) only explained 9% of the variance. Assessment of social determinants may offer improvement over traditional referral criteria to identify children most at risk of cognitive deficits after low birth weight.

Household income and child well-being in Japan: The role of grandparental coresidence and residential proximity

In this study, we examined whether and how the income gradient in child well-being may vary by grandparental coresidence and proximate residence in Japan, a country characterized by a high prevalence of intergenerational proximity and intensive family investment in children’s development. Using data from the Japan Child Panel Survey, we first demonstrated that household income is positively associated with multiple dimensions of children’s well-being, a relationship that was particularly strong for cognitive skills. We also found that children from lower-income families were more likely to coreside with grandparents than their counterparts from middle- and higher-income families, and that children from both lower- and higher-income families had similar likelihoods of living near their grandparents. However, children in lower- and higher-income families who coresided with grandparents had lower math and Japanese test scores than those living at a distance. These relationships resulted in smaller income gradients in test scores for children coresiding with grandparents and near their grandparents, relative to those whose grandparents lived farther away. International comparisons showed that the income gradient in children’s academic performance is largest in the US and smallest in urban China, with Japan being in the middle, and that multigenerational coresidence is generally associated with worse cognitive outcomes for children in both lower- and higher-income families across these three very different contexts. These findings provide new insights into the complex ways in which intergenerational proximity is related to economic disparities in children’s well-being.

Parental quality of life and self-efficacy in pediatric asthma

Objective: Self-efficacy is the personal belief that a behavior can produce a desired result; and in asthma, self-efficacy in asthma care has been related to improvements in asthma outcomes and children’s quality of life. To appreciate the full burden of asthma on families, the relationship between parental self-efficacy and quality of life also needs further study. We aim to characterize this relationship.Methods: Secondary analysis of measurements of parents of children with persistent asthma (n = 252; ages 4-17 years) from a large urban area were identified from a randomized trial; the association between baseline assessments of parental quality of life, measured by the Pediatric Asthma Caregiver’s Quality of Life Questionnaire (PACQLQ), and parental self-efficacy, measured through the Parental Asthma Management Self-Efficacy Scale (PAMSES), were examined through multivariable linear regression.Results: Parental self-efficacy in asthma was positively associated with quality of life among parents of racially and ethnically diverse children (p = 0.01). Confidence in using medications correctly (p = 0.03), having inhalers during a child’s serious breathing problem (p = 0.02), and knowing which medications to use during a child’s serious breathing problem (p = 0.04) were associated with a clinically meaningful difference in parental quality of life. Other significant factors associated with parental quality of life included Hispanic/Latino ethnicity (p < 0.01) of the child and Asthma Control Test scores (p < 0.01).Conclusion: The findings suggest that improving parental confidence on when and how to use their child’s asthma medications, particularly during an asthma attack, might be clinically meaningful in enhancing parent’s quality of life.

Teachers’ Monitoring and Schools’ Performance: Evidence from Public Schools in Pakistan

This paper evaluates the impact of an innovative monitoring system on teacher attendance and school performance in Pakistan. In 2014, the government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province introduced the Independent Monitoring Project aiming at increasing teacher attendance in primary and secondary public schools by distributing to the government-hired monitors smart phones with a special data collection software installed. Our analysis is based on a difference-in-differences approach using the country wide Annual Status of Education Report from 2012 to 2016. Our findings suggest that monitoring of government schools has increased teacher attendance by 7.5 percentage points in the first year of intervention. But the positive effect wears off to 2.7 percentage points in the second year. Child attendance and test scores also increased in the first year, but in the second year they disappeared. Especially, in the first year, the monitoring system improved students’ math, reading, and English test scores by 0.13, 0.14, and 0.15 standard deviation, respectively, if they are grades 1-5. This result suggests that teacher attendance has an important role in delivering better student outcomes, but that monitoring should be coupled with appropriate incentive mechanism in order to have a lasting impact.

Mothers Working during Preschool Years and Child Skills: Does Income Compensate?

Increasing mothers’ labour supply in a child’s preschool years can cause a reduction in time investments that lead to a negative direct effect on mid-childhood and teenage outcomes. But as mothers’ work hours increase, income will rise. We ask whether income can compensate for the negative effect of hours by adopting a novel mediation analysis that exploits exogenous variation in both mothers’ hours and family income in pre-school years. As expected we find a negative direct effect of an increase in mother’s work hours on child test scores at age 11 and 15. However, income fully compensates for this negative direct effect. This is true for the full sample of children, for boys and girls and for children in households whose mother has a low and high level of education.

Children’s Color Trail Test for Objective Assessment of Attention in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Diagnostic Accuracy Study

To compare the Children's Color Trail Test scores in children with and without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to assess its diagnostic performance in assessing attention-deficit. 50 children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (diagnosed as per Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition) and 50 age- and sex-matched children underwent Test 1 and Test 2 of the Children's Color Trail Test. A Receiver Operating Characteristics curve was constructed for the diagnostic accuracy of Children's Color Trail Test in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The Receiver Operating Characteristics curve showed a score ≤32 for Children's Color Trail Test 1 [AUC: 0.8 (0.71 to 0.87); P<0.001] and score ≤40 for Children's Color Trail Test 2 [AUC: 0.85 (0.77 to 0.92); P<0.001] as the best cut-off for diagnosing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Children's Color Trail Test is a promising tool for diagnosing attention deficit, and could be used in settings where parent or teacher reports are not available.

Neonatal health of parents and cognitive development of children

It is well-established that neonatal health is a strong predictor of socioeconomic outcomes later in life, but does neonatal health also predict key outcomes of the next generation? This paper documents a surprisingly strong relationship between birth weight of parents and school test scores of their children. The association between maternal birth weight and child test scores corresponds to 50–80 percent of the association between the child's own birth weight and test scores across various empirical specifications, for example including grandmother fixed effects that isolate within-family differences between mothers. Paternal and maternal birth weights are equally important in predicting child test scores. Our intergenerational results suggest that inequality in neonatal health is important for inequality in key outcomes of the next generation.

Processing speed in 6 year-old children can predict non-verbal intelligence test scores in children at 8 years of age

Processing speed in 6 year-old children can predict non-verbal intelligence test scores in children at 8 years of age

Impact of the socio-economic status on the German receptive noun and verb vocabulary in simultaneous bilingual children with Russian and Turkish as heritage languages

A growing body of evidence shows a positive relation between the language skills of a child and the socio-economic status (SES) of his/her parents. These studies have mainly been conducted in an American English monolingual context. The current paper addresses the question of whether SES has a comparable impact on the simultaneous bilingual language acquisition. In this study, noun and verb test scores of German simultaneous bilingual children with Turkish and Russian as heritage languages are related to the SES of their parents – to verify the existence and the nature of a common pattern. The results do not show common patterns across the two heritage language groups, suggesting the existence of other confounding factors.&#x0D;

The benefits of trees for livable and sustainable communities

Societal Impact StatementTrees play a critical role for people and the planet. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the presence of trees and urban nature can improve people's mental and physical health, children's attention and test scores, the property values in a neighborhood, and beyond. Trees cool our urban centers. Trees are essential for healthy communities and people. The benefits that trees provide can help cities and countries meet 15 of the 17 internationally supported United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This critical review provides a comprehensive argument that trees should be considered an important part of the equation by project managers and civic leaders as we collectively work toward reaching these sustainability goals.SummaryWe live in an era influenced by humans to the point that the Earth's systems are now altered. In addition, a majority of the world's population live in cities. To meet the needs of people in a changing world, The United Nations General Assembly created the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG) to improve the quality of life for people. These broad goals outline the greatest challenges of our time. An effective strategy to assist in meeting these goals is to plant and protect trees, especially in cities where the majority of people live. This paper serves as a critical review of the benefits of trees. Trees promote health and social well‐being by removing air pollution, reducing stress, encouraging physical activity, and promoting social ties and community. Children with views of trees are more likely to succeed in school. Trees promote a strong economy and can provide numerous resources to the people that need them. While cities are getting hotter, trees can reduce urban temperatures. They provide habitat and food for animals. Finally, trees are valuable green infrastructure to manage stormwater. Money spent on urban forestry has a high return on investment. As we navigate this human‐dominated era, we need skilled people who understand the nuances of the built environment and trees as we strategically plan the cities of the future. The overwhelming evidence from the scientific literature suggests that investing in trees is an investment in meeting the UN SDG, and ultimately an investment for a better world.

Effectiveness of early care and education center-based interventions for improving cardiovascular fitness in early childhood: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the literature on early care and education center (ECEC)-based physical activity interventions to identify ecologic environmental factors that improve cardiovascular fitness (CVF) in preschool-aged children. Data sources included PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library Trials, CINHAL, Science Direct, PsychINFO and SPORTDiscus. Peer-reviewed publications of studies that met the following criteria were eligible for inclusion: (1) mean age of participants between two and a half and five and a half years old enrolled in a pre-primary school; (2) randomized controlled trials or quasi-experimental interventions with a control group; (3) interventions occurring before, during, or immediately after school; (4) use of an objective measure or field-based estimate of CVF; (5) enrolled apparently healthy children. In June of 2018, titles (n = 1197) were reviewed for inclusion into the study and 74 abstracts/full texts were assessed for eligibility. Ten articles met all eligibility criteria and were included in the final review. A random effects meta-analysis suggested a moderate-to-large effect size for ECEC-based interventions to increase CVF (g = 0.75; 95%CI [0.40–1.11]). Interventions that included three or more ecologic environments (g = 0.79 [0.34–1.25]) were more effective than interventions occurring at the individual level (g = 0.67 [0.12–1.22]). Study quality was moderate, and (mean ± SD) 17.9 ± 4.3 (63.9%) of 28 checklist items were reported. Preliminary evidence suggests that ECEC-based interventions to increase CVF are highly effective at improving preschool children's exercise test scores. Although ECEC-based interventions show promise, the small number of studies included in this review limits confidence in these findings. Review registered at PROSPERO CRD42018099115.

The impact of drought on human capital in rural India

AbstractWe study the impact of a severe drought on children's educational outcomes in rural Maharashtra, a state in central India. Using pooled cross section data on children's test scores, we employ a difference-in-differences methodology to estimate the impact. We find that the drought caused a decline of 4.14 per cent in math scores and 2.67 per cent in reading scores of affected children. We also study heterogeneity in the impact by gender, age, parents' schooling, and household wealth, finding evidence in support of an income effect whereby households with limited means to smooth consumption disinvest in their children in response to the drought.

Decomposing the social gradient in children’s vocabulary skills at 3 years of age: A mediation analysis using data from a large representative cohort study

Disparities in children’s expressive language by socio-economic status are evident early in childhood and impact children’s development and educational attainment. This study investigated the processes by which maternal education, as a powerful indicator for socio-economic status, affects early expressive language. A nationally representative cohort study of 8,062 children resident in the Republic of Ireland were assessed on the British Ability Scales (BAS) Naming Vocabulary Test at 36 months. A significant difference of almost six points was found between the mean vocabulary test scores of children whose mothers had completed the minimum level of educational attainment compared with children whose mothers had a degree-level qualification. Mediation analysis revealed that 78% of the difference was explained by mediating variables, with differences in household income, parental practice, and material resources accounting for most of the variation. The findings support interventions which redress gaps in maternal education, income, and caregiving.

Are Estimates of Early Education Programs Too Pessimistic? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment that Causally Measures Neighbor Effects

We estimate the direct and spillover effects of a large-scale early childhood intervention on the educational attainment of over 2,000 disadvantaged children in the United States. We show that failing to account for spillover effects results in a severe underestimation of the impact. The intervention induced positive direct effects on test scores of children assigned to the treatment groups. We document large spillover effects on both treatment and control children who live near treated children. On average, spillover effects increase a child's non-cognitive (cognitive) scores by about 1.2 (0.6 to 0.7) standard deviations. The spillover effects are localized, decreasing with the spatial distance to treated neighbors. Our evidence suggests the spillover effect on non-cognitive scores are likely to operate through the child's social network. Alternatively, parental investment is an important channel through which cognitive spillover effects operate. We view our results as speaking to several literatures, perhaps most importantly the role of public programs and neighborhoods on human capital formation at an early age.

School feeding and learning achievement: Evidence from India's midday meal program

We study the effect of the world's largest school feeding program on children's learning outcomes. Staggered implementation across different states of a 2001 Indian Supreme Court Directive mandating the introduction of free school lunches in public primary schools generates plausibly exogenous variation in program exposure across different birth cohorts. We exploit this to estimate the effect of program exposure on math and reading test scores of primary school-aged children. We find that prolonged exposure to midday meals has a robust positive effect on learning achievement. We further investigate various channels that may account for this improvement including complementary schooling inputs, heterogeneous responses by socio-economic status, and intra-household redistribution.