Main Predictors of School Problems among Foster Care Youth
Darron Garner, Ph.D; Jackson de Carvalho, Ph.D.

Abstract
Recent research studies have shown that foster care youth are lagging behind other children in the classroom (Collins, 2004; DeAngelis, 2004; Dilley, Weiner, Martinovich, & Lyons, 2004). Thus, this research study proposes to explore aggregate of factors responsible for the academic struggles of foster care youth. Older Youth from diverse ethnic background in foster care often mediate the impact potentiated by adverse life circumstances on harmful developmental outcomes (Osgood, Foster, Flanagan & Ruth, 2005). Relevant Research study literature shows this group is the most over represented and under serviced members of the child welfare system (O'Brien, Williams, Pecora, English, & Kessler, 2009). The Urban Institute (2014), states that in the past decade foster-care expenditures for children from diverse ethnic background totaled $14.4 billion. In addition, each year, 30,000 alumni "age out" of foster care. These are alumni who exit the foster-care system only because they reach the age of 18, not because they are reunited with their families, are adopted, or leave to attend college. Prior longitudinal research has shown that the nearly 80% of the alumni who are emancipated at the age of 18 failed to obtain a high school diploma. This paper used Binary Logistic regression analysis to examine the predictive relationships between the variables and test the study research question.

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