Kinship Care Placement and Children's Academic Performance

Very little consideration has been given to the impact children's living situations can have on their educational performance. The relationship of family environment to the children's educational performance depends in part upon the experiences and intent of the mediating adults who frame, select, focus and interpret the experiences children have in ways that produce an appropriate attitude toward education. Because of changing family patterns, along with significant social and economic factors plaguing many families today, particularly African American families, a substantial number of children continue to grow up in circumstances that put them at risk for unstable family environments, low achievement, and school failure. These unstable family environments often lead to placements in families other than their biological families. Often times these placements are within the state foster care system and for some the placement is with a relative, known as kinship care. Kinship placement is seen as an alternative in maintaining some type of stable family environment for these children at risk. In view of the relatively high incidence of low school performance and other social issues of children at risk, the role of minority families in the education of their children has become a national interest. The issue being addressed in this article centers around specific family processing factors in kinship care environments and its impact on children's academic performance. doi:10.1300/J045v22n03_03.