Their parents are generally well-educated and affluent. They receive more time and educational resources from those parents than the average child gets from theirs. Yet they get into more conflicts with their classmates at school, display relative little interest and enthusiasm about learning tasks, and register only middling academic performance. About whom are we talking? Adopted children. This is the paradox of adoption in America.

A recent Institute for Family Studies research brief called “The Paradox of Adoption” reported that adopted children had relatively high rates of behavior and learning problems in kindergarten and first grade, despite having home environments that were well above average in terms of family income and parent education levels. This follow-up report provides supplementary information on the prevalence of disabilities among adopted children, and on how adoptees fare in late elementary and middle school.

A child who has been abandoned or removed from the care of both birth parents can gain much from being adopted into a loving family. Adoptive families typically provide the children in their care with residence in a safe, supportive neighborhood, attendance at a well-functioning, high-achieving school, and love, emotional support, and intellectual stimulation at home.1 These environmental benefits should enable the young person to rise above the loss of their birth parents and any adverse experiences and enable them to flourish—or so current models of children’s development would lead us to believe. Yet adopted children and their parents often encounter, perhaps, unexpected difficulties, especially when the child gets to school.2 Our analysis of newly-released data from the U.S. Department of Education shows just how prevalent learning and behavioral issues are among adopted students in elementary, middle, and high school.