Graphing Longitudinal Data: Deaf Children in the “Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth”

Historically, deaf education in the United States has achieved poor results. An oft-quoted statistic is that on average, deaf students graduating from high school (at age 18-21) perform at the level of hearing 8-10 year olds in terms of reading and writing skills (Allen, 1994; Traxler, 2000). Performing secondary analyses on the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) focusing on developmental and educational outcomes allows one to predict growth patterns in each for deaf and hearing children. Children were flagged as deaf by careful deliberation of multiple questions to indicate hearing status. A sibling of each deaf child was picked as a means of comparison, to control for home environment. The use of frequencies, means, and growth models disproves many past assumptions and raises some interesting questions.