Access to medical care and use of services(continued)

Behavioral/emotional care

Eight percent of Iowa's children needed behavioral or emotional care in the previous year; Latino and White children were more likely to need this care (8%) than African-American (6%) or Asian (4%) children. About 3% of all children in Iowa were limited in the previous 12 months because of behavioral and emotional health issues. On a series of questions designed to rate the behavioral and emotional health of children, 25% of all children in Iowa had excellent behavioral and emotional health, 70% had good behavioral and emotional health,
while for 5%, it was poor. There were only small differences in the way the behavioral and emotional health of children was evaluated by race/ethnicity.

Prescription drugs

There was a significant difference in the reported need for prescription drugs by race/ethnicity. African-American and Asian children were less likely (33 and 35%, respectively) to have needed prescription drugs in the previous year than Latino (49%) or White (51%) children. Almost one in eleven Latino (9%) and White (8%) children were reported to have had a problem getting a prescription filled in the previous year.

School performance

Parents were asked several questions regarding their child's education, including questions about their child's engagement in school, their performance in school, and their expected school advancement. A series of four questions were used to evaluate the degree to which school-age children in Iowa were engaged in school:
(1) how much the child cared about doing well, (2) how much they needed to be forced to complete homework, (3) whether they did just enough homework to get by, and (4) if they completed homework on time. Latino children were slightly less likely to be identified as having a 'low engagement in school' (11% vs 14%) and slightly less likely to be considered 'highly engaged in school' (40% vs 41% of African American and 42% of Asian children)

The performance of about 70% of children was rated as excellent or very good with some variation by race. The school performance of Asian children was most likely to be rated excellent (40%). However, it was also most likely to be rated fair or poor (13%).

Almost one in three African-American students changed schools in the previous year (32%) with 4% having changed schools two or more times. This compares to only 13% of Latino and 10% of White school-aged children having changed schools in the previous year. The vast majority of all children's parents (88%) would like to see their child attend a 4-year college, with African-American parents most interested in having their children going on beyond a 4-year college degree (26% vs 21% of Latino and 18% of White children). There were too few Asian respondents of school age to report the percentages validly.

Figure 8. Parent rating of children's school performance by race