Population-based exploration of academic achievement outcomes in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia survivors.

OBJECTIVE Examine academic achievement among pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia survivors diagnosed during the years 1993-2008. METHOD A deterministic linkage of the Iowa Cancer Registry and Iowa Testing Programs databases was performed and yielded 147 survivors. Achievement data, in the form of Iowa Percentile Rank scores, were obtained and analyzed by grade and content domain. RESULTS Children diagnosed before age 5 evidenced more underachievement than those diagnosed later (p = .05). Underachievement was noted in mathematics in grades 8 and 11 (p's < .05), in addition to a longitudinal decrease in scores from grades 4 through 11 (p = .01). No differences were found in academic achievement between males and females. CONCLUSIONS Utilization of a population-based approach with a nationally recognized, standardized instrument indicates that academic underachievement is subtle yet exists, most notably in mathematics.