Comparison of the Educational Deficiencies of Delinquent and Nondelinquent Students

¶ … Educational Deficiencies of Delinquent and Nondelinquent Students

This study was conducted in Florida to explore the relationship between education and delinquency. The authors contend that previous research that explored this issue was limited by the methodology used in those studies. Prior literature on delinquency and behavior reported relationships between poor school performance and delinquent behavior, a correlation between poor academic performance and delinquency, school status and delinquency, and social class and delinquency.

The authors claim previous studies were limited by the use of small sample sizes drawn from a single school and that most prior studies did not adequately address the issue of spuriousness. As a result the current understanding of how education can be used effectively in delinquency prevention and treatment remains fragmented and inconclusive (p. 292).

The large sample size, 5,187 in the experimental group and 5,187 in the comparison group provided statistical validity to this study. Large samples facilitate generalization of findings. Previous studies were confined to samples of students from individual juvenile justice facilities or schools. None of the prior research employed statewide data that was representative of delinquent and nondelinquent student populations.

This study matched a delinquent group of students with a nondelinquent group by age, race, gender, socioeconomic status, exceptionality status, and school type. Efforts were put in place to control for pre-existing conditions between the two groups. Delinquent and nondelinquent groups were compared in terms of academic achievement, attendance, and disciplinary problems. Controls for age, race, gender, and socioeconomic status were used to mitigate the argument that some of the apparent relationships reported in the previous literature between delinquency and educational deficiencies were merely artifacts and could be attributed to lack of these control variables.

Another control variable explicitly included in this study was exceptionality status; students with disabilities and giftedness. Previous studies document a connection between disabilities and academic underachievement and indicate that disabled students were more likely to have disciplinary problems and were more likely to be suspended and expelled. Moreover, exceptionality status was significantly related to all of the other variables of educational deficiencies being examined in this study. The researchers matched all cases of exceptionality status to compare delinquent and nondelinquent students in terms of academic performance, attendance, and disciplinary problems. Previous studies had reported a high prevalence of disabilities among delinquent students as compared to non-delinquent students, however, none of the studies controlled for exceptionality status in their research efforts to compare school performance between these two groups (p. 296).