Foster Care Entry and Later Academic Achievement Among Infants Involved With Child Protective Services

ABSTRACT Timing of foster care placement, especially early in life, may have important implications for children's later academic functioning. Given racial disparities in placement decisions, examining associations between age at foster care entry and school outcomes by race is warranted. To address this gap, linked, longitudinal administrative data were used for a cohort of infants involved with child protective services by age one (n = 8795; 47% White, 21% Black, 16% Hispanic, 16% other race/ethnicity; 52% male). Results suggest foster care placement in the first 6 months is related to higher odds of basic reading test scores and lower odds of absenteeism, with associations stronger for Black children. These results have significant implications for the child welfare system.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Child Development

• Publication date

  2025-08-20

• Fields of study

  Sociology, Medicine, Education

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/cdev.70008PMID 40831407PMCID 12370278
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Prevalence and Treatment of Maternal Substance Use Disorder in Child Welfare

  2025cited by this paper
• Discrimination in Multi-Phase Systems: Evidence from Child Protection.

  2024cited by this paper
• Life-course trajectories of children through the U. S foster care system.

  2024influential reference
• Neglecting to consider early emotional development after abuse and/or neglect: Insights and recommendations from child welfare providers

  2023cited by this paper
• Racial Discrimination in Child Protection

  2023cited by this paper
• Foster Care, Kinship Care, and the Transition to Adulthood: Do Child Welfare System Processes Explain Differences in Outcomes?

  2023cited by this paper
• Child protective services involvement and exclusionary school discipline

  2023cited by this paper
• Lifetime rates and types of subsequent child protection system contact following a first report of neglect: An age-stratified analysis

  2023cited by this paper
• The Two-Parent Privilege

  2023cited by this paper
• Racial/Ethnic Differences in Child Protective Services Reporting, Substantiation and Placement, With Comparison to Non-CPS Risks and Outcomes: 2005–2019

  2023cited by this paper
• Addressing Gaps in Culturally Responsive Mental Health Interventions in the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse

  2023cited by this paper
• Child Protective Services Reports After Reunification: An Examination of the Risk of Being Rereported to Child Protective Services After Returning Home From Foster Care

  2023cited by this paper
• A Meta-Regression of Racial Disparities in Wellbeing Outcomes During and After Foster Care

  2022cited by this paper
• Are the Average Effects of Foster Care Placement Really Close to Zero?

  2022cited by this paper
• Can Early Childhood Education Be Compensatory? Examining the Benefits of Child Care Among Children Who Experience Neglect

  2022cited by this paper
• The Cumulative Prevalence of Congregate Care Placement for U.S. Children by Race/Ethnicity, 2019

  2022cited by this paper
• Testing a QuantCrit-Informed Approach to the Empirical Study of Race/Ethnicity and Child Maltreatment

  2022cited by this paper
• Rates of Emotional Disturbance Among Children in Foster Care: Comparing Federal Child Welfare Data and Medicaid Records in Two States

  2022cited by this paper
• What Does Child Protective Services Investigate as Neglect? A Population-Based Study

  2022cited by this paper
• Is There a Foster Care-To-Prison Pipeline? Evidence from Quasi-Randomly Assigned Investigators

  2022cited by this paper
• Engaging Families in Voluntary Prevention Services to Reduce Future Child Abuse and Neglect: a Randomized Controlled Trial

  2021cited by this paper
• Exploring the mediating effect of academic engagement on math and reading achievement for students who have experienced maltreatment.

  2021cited by this paper
• Experience-driven plasticity and the emergence of psychopathology: A mechanistic framework integrating development and the environment into the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) model.

  2021cited by this paper
• The Centrality of Child Maltreatment to Criminology.

  2021cited by this paper
• Foster Care, Permanency, and Risk of Prison Entry

  2021cited by this paper
• Foster Care and Best Interests of the Child

  2020cited by this paper
• School Absenteeism Associated With Child Protection System Involvement, Maltreatment Type, and Time in Out-of-Home Care

  2020cited by this paper
• Dropout rates of in-person psychosocial treatment programs for substance use disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

  2020cited by this paper
• Student Achievement

  2020cited by this paper
• The Scope, Nature, and Causes of Child Abuse and Neglect

  2020cited by this paper
• Who Is and Is Not Served by Child Protective Services Systems? Implications for a Prevention Infrastructure to Reduce Child Maltreatment

  2020cited by this paper
• Foster Care in a Life Course Perspective

  2020cited by this paper
• When Does Inequality Grow? A Seasonal Analysis of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Learning From Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade

  2020cited by this paper
• Foster Care: How We Can, and Should, Do More for Maltreated Children.

  2020cited by this paper
• Effects of the Child Protection System on Parents

  2020cited by this paper
• Temporary Stays and Persistent Gains: The Causal Effects of Foster Care

  2020influential reference
• Cumulative Prevalence of Confirmed Maltreatment and Foster Care Placement for US Children by Race/Ethnicity, 2011-2016.

  2020cited by this paper
• The Causal Impact of Removing Children from Abusive and Neglectful Homes

  2019cited by this paper
• Community-Level Social Determinants and Children’s School Readiness

  2019cited by this paper
• Punishing and toxic neighborhood environments independently predict the intergenerational social mobility of black and white children

  2019cited by this paper
• Foster care placement instability: A meta-analytic review

  2019cited by this paper
• Age-specific risk factors associated with placement instability among foster children.

  2018cited by this paper
• School Absenteeism in Children and Adolescents.

  2018cited by this paper
• Permanency and the Educational and Economic Attainment of Former Foster Children in Early Adulthood

  2018cited by this paper
• Developmental Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect: Implications for Intervention

  2018cited by this paper
• School readiness of maltreated children: Associations of timing, type, and chronicity of maltreatment.

  2018cited by this paper
• Childhood Maltreatment and Early Developmental Vulnerabilities at Age 5 Years.

  2018cited by this paper
• Early Exposure to Child Maltreatment and Academic Outcomes

  2018cited by this paper
• School readiness of maltreated preschoolers and later school achievement: The role of emotion regulation, language, and context.

  2018cited by this paper
• Socioeconomic Resource Environments in Biological and Alternative Family Care and Children's Cognitive Performance.

  2018cited by this paper
• What do we really know about usual care child protective services

  2017cited by this paper
• The Gap Within the Gap

  2017cited by this paper
• Moving Beyond Correlations in Assessing the Consequences of Poverty

  2017cited by this paper
• Quality of Caregiving in Mothers With Illicit Substance Use: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

  2017cited by this paper
• Child-to-adult neurodevelopmental and mental health trajectories after early life deprivation: the young adult follow-up of the longitudinal English and Romanian Adoptees study.

  2017cited by this paper
• Exploring Multilevel Factors for Family Engagement in Home Visiting Across Two National Models

  2017cited by this paper
• Future Directions in Childhood Adversity and Youth Psychopathology

  2016cited by this paper
• Language Problems Among Abused and Neglected Children

  2016cited by this paper
• Recent Trends in Income, Racial, and Ethnic School Readiness Gaps at Kindergarten Entry

  2016cited by this paper
• Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act

  2016cited by this paper
• Maltreatment in Infancy

  2016cited by this paper
• Child Protection Investigations in Out-of-Home Care

  2015cited by this paper
• An Examination of the Impact of Permanency on Young Adults' Special Education Experiences.

  2015cited by this paper
• Effects of institutional rearing and foster care on psychopathology at age 12 years in Romania: follow-up of an open, randomised controlled trial.

  2015cited by this paper
• Do early care and education services improve language development for maltreated children? Evidence from a national child welfare sample.

  2015cited by this paper
• Children’s Academic Achievement and Foster Care

  2015cited by this paper
• Longterm Consequences of Child Maltreatment

  2014cited by this paper
• Health, Developmental and Support Needs of Vulnerable Children – Comparing Children in Foster Care and Children in Need

  2014cited by this paper
• Parenting Infants

  2013cited by this paper
• Service Referral Patterns Among Black and White Families Involved With Child Protective Services

  2013cited by this paper
• The Parenting Gap.

  2013cited by this paper
• Associations between center-based care accreditation status and the early educational outcomes of children in the child welfare system

  2012cited by this paper
• Early intervention and maltreated children: A current look at the child abuse prevention and treatment act and part C.

  2012cited by this paper
• Socioeconomic status and cognitive functioning: moving from correlation to causation.

  2012cited by this paper
• Effectiveness of part C early intervention physical, occupational, and speech therapy services for preterm or low birth weight infants in Wisconsin, United States.

  2012cited by this paper
• NSCAW II baseline report: Introduction to NSCAW II

  2011cited by this paper
• HOMES

  2011cited by this paper
• The effects of maltreatment and neuroendocrine regulation on memory performance.

  2010cited by this paper
• Improved Detection of Developmental Delays Among Young Children in Foster Care

  2010cited by this paper
• Excused Versus Unexcused: How Student Absences in Elementary School Affect Academic Achievement

  2009cited by this paper
• Do Early Childhood Interventions Prevent Child Maltreatment?

  2009cited by this paper
• Estimating the "impact" of out-of-home placement on child well-being: approaching the problem of selection bias.

  2009cited by this paper
• Mental Health and Special Education Services at School Entry for Children Who Were Involved With the Child Welfare System as Infants

  2009cited by this paper
• The Influence of Maternal and Family Risk on Chronic Absenteeism in Early Schooling.

  2008cited by this paper
• Child Protection and Child Outcomes: Measuring the Effects of Foster Care.

  2007cited by this paper
• Age of onset of child maltreatment predicts long-term mental health outcomes.

  2007cited by this paper
• The Physical, Developmental, and Mental Health Needs of Young Children in Child Welfare by Initial Placement Type

  2005cited by this paper
• Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation

  2005cited by this paper
• Separation and Reunification: Using Attachment Theory and Research to Inform Decisions Affecting the Placements of Children in Foster Care

  2004cited by this paper
• Children who return home from foster care: a 6-year prospective study of behavioral health outcomes in adolescence.

  2001cited by this paper
• Normative development: The ontogeny of attachment.

  1999cited by this paper
• "I Was Tooken": How Children Experience Removal from Their Parents Preliminary to Placement into Foster Care.

  1998cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.