Educational Administration Quarterly Peña / HEALTH CARE AND TITLE 1 SCHOOLS A Study of Health Care Assistance in a Title 1 School District

This study opens with a discussion on the health status of school-aged youth in the United States. Then, it describes how student health problems and learning intersect and how health care in public schools is provided both nationally and in a particular prekinder-garten through eighth grade Title 1 public school district in the southwestern United States. Specifically, this study examines how health care in this district functioned over-all and how school administrators interacted with health care providers in their schools. Findings indicate that administrators did not routinely associate the health of students with their performance in school and that their capacity to assist school health care pro-viders was weak. Moreover, results suggest approaches to health care assistance fol-lowed exacerbated conditions that placed the wellness of students at risk. These findings raise concerns about the quality of health care provided to students and the capacity for educational administrators to assist. At a time when the nation’s economy is at its highest point ever, the health of children in the United States continues to decline. In 1992, members of the American Medical Association stated that “for the first time in the history of this country, young people are less healthy than were their parents ” (Cohen, 1992, p. 126). In 1996, analysts revealed that at least 1 in 20—or as many as 3 million school-aged youth—experience serious emotional problems (Department of Health and Human Services [DHHS], 1996). In 1997, researchers indicated that child abuse increased to more than 850,000 sub-stantiated cases a year, that teen suicides nearly doubled since 1970, and that since 1980 alone, teen homicides also nearly doubled (Bush, 1997)