1. Birth Weight, Early Childhood and School Achievement.
- Author
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Southern Illinois Univ., Edwardsville. Center for Urban and Environmental Research and Services., Altes, Jane, and Bittner, Marguerite
- Abstract
This project was designed to explore the relationship between school achievement and birth weight in a population of poverty black school children in the hope that the assumptions about environmental similarity might be approximated, and that the relatively advanced age of the subjects would allow examination of the lasting effects of birth weight. For this study, children from 13 of the 22 poorest schools in the city of East St. Louis, Illinois, were selected. The sample comprised 43 percent of the third and sixth grade students enrolled in those schools during the 1970-71 academic year. It was found that low birth weight children are far above their proportionate share of the classes for the mentally handicapped. Birth weight does persist as a significant variable in school achievement even in an area characterized by poor educational preparation and results. But though this relationship interest in that it does persist beyond infancy and does occur in a generally uniform (and poor) social and economic environment, academic failure cannot be accurately predicted from birth weight nor can one, from this information, predict that a child will be born at low weight. These data do not indicate that improved prenatal care might have more effect than special education programs for the poor. (Author/JM)
- Published
- 1974