Last week, for the first time in history, California released statewide
data on the educational outcomes of students in foster care. Until now, the
state has not published school data on the approximately 70,000 foster
children in California’s children separately from other children.
But as a requirement of the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, the
California Department of Education has just published data on the number of
foster students at the county, district and school levels, as well as their
performance on Common Core aligned tests.
In the coming months, the
department will release figures on suspensions and expulsion of foster
students, graduation rates and their movement from one school to another.
This is a big moment for California’s foster youth. The achievement
gap for students in foster care is no longer invisible. We have a baseline.
We can track educational progress for foster youth, measure the impact of
our collective efforts to close the achievement gap between them and other
students and calibrate those efforts to ensure we’re supporting this amazing
group of young people as effectively as possible.
While the stark
reality of this achievement gap may be a surprise to many, it confirms what
the foster youth advocacy community has known for some time: Without
targeted, individualized, whole-child support for students in foster care
and true collaboration between the various systems that serve them, foster
youth are prevented from reaching their full academic potential.
As
an organization deeply committed to helping foster youth receive the
education they deserve, we are all too familiar with the reasons foster
youth struggle in school. We observe how untreated trauma is addressed not
with school-based mental health services, but with suspensions and
expulsions.
We meet countless elementary students who have already
faced multiple school changes after disruptions in their foster home
placements. We hear from high school youth who have endured multiple
mid-semester school changes, failed to receive credit for their hard work in
previous schools and are woefully behind their classmates – through no fault
of their own. We hear, several times over, the degree to which adults hold
heartbreakingly low expectations for their futures.
Fortunately,
California is well positioned to make significant strides in improving
educational outcomes for foster youth. The state has long been a national
leader in this area. In 2013, with the passage of the Local Control Funding
Formula, we became the first state in the country to formally include foster
youth in education reform, supporting and amplifying the critical role that
school districts play in addressing the educational needs of foster youth.
School districts get additional funds based on the number of foster children
in their classrooms.
But much more must be done to ensure that young
people in foster care receive the attention and support they need to succeed
in school. There must be a new focus and commitment that reaches vertically
throughout all levels of the education system, and horizontally across the
multiple systems that serve foster youth:
• School districts, through their Local Control and
Accountability Plans, can embrace their mandate to engage the community in
an effort to learn about the needs of their foster youth, then increase and
improve services to those students.
• County offices of education have a
unique role to play in identifying opportunities to coordinate services to
foster youth and supporting school districts’ efforts to serve foster youth.
• The California Department of Education and California Collaborative for
Educational Excellence have an opportunity to provide school districts and
County Offices of Education with targeted technical assistance focused on
students in foster care.
• Child welfare agencies, behavioral health
agencies and the courts must all recognize the importance of educational
achievement in the lives of foster youth and take a coordinated approach to
removing systemic barriers to educational success.
Everyone has a role to play, and no one agency or system can make
progress alone. This data is an important step, and one that we hope builds
a resounding call to action: We can, must and will do better.
Michelle Traiman
21 September 2016
Michelle Francois Traiman is Director of the
National Center for Youth Law’s Foster Youth Education Initiative
https://edsource.org/2016/tracking-educational-progress-of-californias-foster-children-just-a-first-step/569620