162003 Effects of early childhood environmental exposures on elementary school test performance

Monday, November 5, 2007: 8:45 AM

Marie Lynn Miranda , Children's Environmental Health Initiative, Duke University, Durham, NC
Dohyeong Kim, PhD , Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC
M. Alicia Overstreet, BS , Children's Environmental Health Initiative, Duke University, Durham, NC
Andy Hull , Children's Environmental Health Initiative, Duke University, Durham, NC
Jerome Reiter, PhD , Institute of Statistics & Decision Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC
S. Philip Morgan, PhD , Sociology, Duke University, Durham, NC
           
The Children's Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI) at Duke University has partnered with the North Carolina Education Research Data Center (NCERDC) and the North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics to explore the relationship between prenatal and early childhood environments and educational outcomes for children in the State of North Carolina. We link three large-scale administrative datasets from three developmental time points in children's lives and then assess the impact of in utero tobacco exposure and early childhood lead exposure on educational achievement in elementary school within the context of children's socioeconomic status. Detailed birth record data is collected at birth, lead surveillance is undertaken before age six, and end of grade testing in North Carolina begins in grade three (~ age 8-9).

Our analysis indicates that controlling for environmental factors attenuates the race- and income-based "achievement gaps" in test scores. Furthermore, the influence of environmental factors persists through multiple years of elementary school testing data. This in turn highlights the importance of attending to environmental exposures as a key component of school success.

These three linked cross-sectional datasets for a statewide population cohort provide an innovative basis for analyzing the effects of early childhood environmental exposures on elementary school test performance, while controlling for socioeconomic variables at multiple points in children's lives. We explicitly and systematically assess selectivity issues introduced by the different mechanisms and formats used for collecting information for each of the three datasets, as well as the non-completely-overlapping populations that each datasets covers.

Learning Objectives:
1) Evaluate challenges of linking state-wide datasets collected separately for vital statistics, health surveillance, and education administration purposes. 2) Understand the effect of prenatal and early childhood environmental exposures on performance on end of grade tests later in life. 3) Incorporate longitudinal demographic and environmental exposure data into population level analysis of performance on end of grade tests. 4) Explore the attenuation of traditional explanatory variables with the incorporation environmental exposure variables and prenatal/neonatal vital statistics

Keywords: Education, Information Databases

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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