(PS8-96) Knowledge of Hypothetical Students’ Foster Care Status Impacts Teachers’ Expectations, Attributions, and Decision-making

Collaboration between schools, child welfare, and other service providers is crucial for promoting school success among youth in foster care. However, concerns that teachers may view youth in foster care negatively create a barrier to collaboration. Despite these concerns, to date virtually no quantitative research exists documenting the presence of bias toward foster youth in academic settings. This study used an experimental design to test whether informing elementary school teachers (n = 179) of hypothetical students’ foster care status resulted in biased expectations, attributions, and decision-making. This study also examined the effect of student race on teachers’ judgments and decisions, as well as the extent to which teachers’ experience with youth in the foster care system mitigated effects of students’ foster care status. Teachers were presented with six vignettes describing hypothetical male students who recently moved into the school district and who exhibited a mix of positive and negative indicators of academic performance. Each vignette was accompanied by a picture of a male elementary school-aged child, half of whom were Black and half of whom were White. For each participant, two vignettes were randomly assigned the following prompt: “This child recently moved into your district following being placed in foster care.” Following presentation of each vignette, teachers responded to five questions assessing their expectations for the students’ academic achievement. Teachers were then given prompts describing academic problems (e.g., ‘Imagine that this student failed a test), after which they reported their attributions for the student’s academic difficulty, as well as likelihood of referring the student for an evaluation for special education.

Teachers reported lower academic expectations for students in foster care compared to their peers and were found to exhibit a bias toward attributing foster youths’ academic problems to less internal, less controllable causes. Effects of student race were limited to a bias toward attributing academic problems to less internal and less controllable causes. There was some evidence that teachers’ history of contact with youth in the foster care system mitigated the impact of student foster care status on teachers’ judgments and decision-making. Findings highlight the need to disseminate accurate information regarding the academic needs (and strengths) of youth in foster care and present interesting implications for future efforts to support youth in foster care.