COGNITIVE AND ACADEMIC FUNCTIONING OF HOMELESS CHILDREN COMPARED WITHHOUSED CHILDREN

Background. During the past 10 years, the number of homeless families has increased in every region of the United States. Despite several st udies of this population, there are few data regarding the cognitive f unctioning of these homeless children. The aim of this controlled stud y was to determine the effect of homelessness on cognitive and academi c functioning of children aged 6 to 11 years. Methods. Homeless childr en (N = 102) and their mothers living in shelters were compared with a housed group of children (N = 178) and their mothers selected from th e homeless child's classroom in New York City between August 1998 and August 1992. Groups were compared using standardized cognitive and aca demic performance instruments. Results. Controlling for child's age, s ex, race, social class, and family status, verbal intelligence (estima ted by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) and nonverbal intelligence (estimated by the Raven's Progressive Matrices) were not significantl y different between the groups. However, academic achievement (measure d by the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised [WRAT-R]) was significant ly poorer in reading (75% of homeless children compared with 48% of ho used children were below grade level), spelling (72.4% of homeless chi ldren compared with 50% of housed children were below grade level), an d arithmetic (53.6% of homeless children compared with 21.7% of housed children were below grade level). These dramatic differences in acade mic performance did not appear to be related to the mother's report of the number of days missed from school or the length of homelessness, but were associated with: (1) the number of school changes for the WRA T-R reading subtest, and (2) grade repetition for the WRAT-R spelling subtest. Conclusions. These data demonstrate no difference in cognitiv e functioning between homeless and housed children. However, homeless children performed significantly more poorly than housed children in t ests of academic performance.