Apples for Health- Kids exposed to family violence do poorly

Kids exposed to family violence do poorly

DAVIS, Calif., May 12 (UPI) -- Children exposed to domestic violence have more discipline issues, underperform in math and reading, and affect grades of other students, U.S. researchers said.

Scott Carrell of the University of California--Davis and Mark Hoekstra of the University of Pittsburgh said adding one troubled student to a classroom of 20 students decreases student reading and math test scores by more than two-thirds of a percentile point and increases misbehavior among other students in the classroom by 16 percent.

Carrell and Hoekstra examined whether troubled boys affect their peers differently than do troubled girls.

The study, published in the summer issue of Education Next, said negative peer effects appear to be driven primarily by the troubled boys and are most pronounced on other boys in the classroom.

Carrell and Hoekstra worked with a confidential student-level data set that consists of observations of students in grades 3 through 5 from 22 public schools over the period 1995-2003 in a district of roughly 30,000 students.