Young children’s educational expectations for themselves, conceptualized as
a college-bound identity(CBI),is theorized
as an important and, fortunately, malleable self-concept predictive of educational
attainment. Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs) are emerging as an important intervention
for shaping these expectations but have remained understudied among rural populations.
This study utilizes survey data from a measure of CBI collected from N = 161 rural
second graders and academic performance perceptions survey data from their parents.
Findings support better performance of a global second-order factor describing CBI
compared to a single-item measure of child educational expectations. Participation
in the CSA is associated with greater levels of CBI andCBI was found to be positively associated with parent
perceptions of child academic performance.These findings are among the first that examine CBI in young children in a rural context. Further
research is needed to understand the causal sequence of these associations
and how the dynamic between CSA programming and CBI manifests across age groups.
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