A major reason why maltreated children do worse in school than nonmaltreated children may be because their families move much more frequently and they change schools often, according to a recent award-winning Cornell University study.

The study found that during their school years abused and neglected children move, on average, twice as frequently as other children. Previous work by the Cornell researchers had found that maltreated children do significantly worse in school and have many more discipline problems than children who are not abused or neglected.

"This study not only lends empirical support to anecdotal reports that maltreated children move more frequently but also that higher rates of mobility are linked with poorer academic performance," said John Eckenrode, Ph.D., Cornell associate professor of human development and family studies in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.

The study, "Mobility as a Mediator of the Effects of Child Maltreatment on Academic Performance," was conducted with Cornell graduate student Elizabeth Rowe, Molly Laird of Quest International in Granville, Ohio, and Jacqueline Brathwaite, formerly of Hunter College and who worked with Eckenrode as part of a summer research program for minority students.

It was published in Child Development (1995, Vol. 66) and was the 1995 recipient of the Robert Chin Memorial Award by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues for being "original and important."

The researchers matched a sample of 530 maltreated boys and girls, grades K-12, with nonmaltreated children, all from Elmira, N.Y., on gender, grade, school and socioeconomic status to analyze the effects of maltreatment on recent achievement test scores, current grades and grade repetitions and how mobility affected these factors.

They found that mobility helped account for the effects of maltreatment on each of these measures; specifically, for grades in English and reading, 33 percent of the effect of maltreatment was accounted for by amount of mobility. For test scores and grade repetitions, 15 percent and 19 percent, respectively, were accounted for by amount of mobility.

"We suspect that the high mobility among maltreated children affects their academic achievement through various mechanisms," said Eckenrode, whose study is one of the few case-control research projects in this area that used a large sample and looked at the long-term effects of the different types of maltreatment. Unstable family relationships and the generally dysfunctional nature of the families associated with maltreatment may predispose these families to move frequently. These families also tend to be more socially isolated and have fewer ties with neighbors and kin than non- maltreating families.

"Increased mobility may further the social isolation of the child and increase the loss of social support from family, friends, neighbors, schoolmates and teachers. Moving may also affect the child's emotional state which could be linked with learning difficulties," Eckenrode reported.

"Discontinuity in the curriculum and teacher expectations also could be a factor as the child moves between schools, and finally, the difficulties that parents and siblings experience as a result of mobility may be additional stressors for the child. All these factors may reduce the child's sense of control and self-esteem; his environment feels increasingly unpredictable and stable sources of attachment become less available."

Eckenrode said that the study has implications for policy which should help stabilize the lives of maltreated children by striving to reduce the number of unnecessary school transfers; he also recommended special programs that target support to highly mobile students because they would likely benefit maltreated children disproportionately.

Eckenrode 's previous analysis with the same sample, conducted in collaboration with Laird and John Doris, Cornell professor emeritus of human development and family studies and former director of Cornell's Family Life Development Center, had found in 1993 that while neglected children do significantly worse academically than other children, physically abused children have the most discipline problems. Sexually abused children, on the other hand, showed no differences in academic performance or in discipline.

The researchers also found that, in general, maltreated children did significantly poorer than non-maltreated peers in standardized tests and grades and were 2.5 times more likely to repeat a grade. These findings persisted even when school, gender, number of siblings, age, place of residence and public assistance status were controlled for statistically. The effects of maltreatment did not differ for boys and girls.

The studies were supported by the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.