Mainstream media may have forgotten about the crisis on the southern American border. The abandonment of images showing countless unaccompanied minors and the absence of accountability from the White House and Capitol Hill have not made the problem go away. The need for foster care increases with every abandoned child crossing the southern border. The shortage of licensed foster care parents has been an issue for some time; now, the need for foster parents is overwhelming. What is more forgotten is the future education and subsequent quality of life awaiting these parentless immigrants if they do not have the educational equity shared by the dominant population.
The new wave of foreign foster children may break a system that is already flawed when it comes to educating foster care students. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in San Antonio I.S.D. v. Rodriguez that education was not a fundamental right guaranteed by the federal constitution; neither was it protected by the equal protection clause. From then, school finance litigation was to be handled by the states. (Reyes, 2006) Eleven years later, the poor school districts in Texas filed a lawsuit against the Texas school finance system for discriminating against students in property-poor districts. The Texas Supreme Court found the school system did not address disparities or provide educational equity. (Reyes, 2006) Since then, the Texas legislature has made significant impacts and trailblazed educational reforms to affect and eliminate achievement disparities. Few examples will top the S.C.E. funds or the use of tuition and fee waivers. As of 2019, Texas and Florida had annually given over three-thousand waivers to foster care students in comparison to 500, collectively, from over sixteen other states. (Watt & Faulkner, 2020) Coalesced with federal efforts like the Federal Chafee Foster Care Independence Program that provides education and training vouchers, the state and federal governments have taken prejudice stances in support of foster care youth seeking educational equity. However, educational inequity persists. Research stresses the importance of a holistic approach to filling in the gaps. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022) If a holistic approach is not the answer, the system needs examination to determine what kinds of interventions are required.
Literature Review
Before any reasonable discussion of educational equity for foster care students may begin, it is essential to address the elephant in the room; What distinguishes a foster care student’s paradigm from that of a non-foster care student with the same socioeconomic status?
There is no uniqueness in the foster care students’ paradigms when one considers that both groups, foster care students and non-foster care students, of the same socioeconomic status, face difficulties in paying for post-secondary school, finding means to meet their basic needs, finding childcare, and having parenting concerns. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022) In 2003, more than half the students in Texas schools were at an economic disadvantage. Texas had the second-highest number of families living 200% below the poverty line. (Reyes, 2006) Both groups have low engagements in school. Suppose the correlation between positive school engagement, academic attainment, and positive mental and behavioral health outcomes holds water. In that case, it is noteworthy to associate low engagement with failing students and school systems. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022)
There is no distinction between parents’ education levels, the available resources, access to books, computers, and organized neighborhood recreational activities. These two groups are equally at-risk students who are likely to have low achievement, retention, behavior, and attendance problems. According to a study of students in non-economically disadvantaged and economically underprivileged districts, the educational gap widened with each passing year. The results pointed out that non economically disadvantaged districts’ 3rd graders scored 21.5% higher. By the time these children reached the 11th grade, the gap had widened to 113%. (Reyes, 2006)
With all the similarities, foster care children are a legally protected group under the Every Student Success Act of 2015. Federal law requires transition planning and court hearings stacked on the obstacles that foster care children share with the non-foster care children of the same socioeconomic status. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022) A turn of the century study distinguishes foster care students as it revealed that children in Chicago Public Schools were more than twice as likely to change schools. Over two-thirds of foster care children experienced a school change. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022) A WestEd study of California foster care students revealed that 90% of non-foster care students stayed in school for an entire year, while just two-thirds of foster care students could say the same. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022) The school changes are significant obstacles for education equity, perhaps the catalyst for low school engagement for foster care children, distinguishing the cause of their low engagement.
Additionally, researchers have correlated frequent school changes with a lack of college-preparatory courses and limited support. These are additional impediments to educational progress. (Watt & Faulkner, 2020) A more recent study revealed that 10% of foster youth attended three or more schools in a school year compared to 1% of their peers. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022)
When one considers the underlying reasons and factors for frequent movements, the distinction between foster care students and their peers becomes more evident. Although risk factors for education and placement disruptions build with every passing year, a foster child who moves congregate living enters an abyss of despond. By the time the older students enter congregate living, they would have passed through multiple placements. Many were not wanted, resistant to authority, accrued criminal records, and experimented with illegal drugs. Research correlates congregate living with behavioral issues, high justice system involvement, and poor educational outcomes. These students are less likely to graduate high school than their peers. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022)
The Impact of Placement Disruptions
Before arriving in congregate living, federal law requires placement in the least restrictive and most family-like environment suitable to their needs. (Kierra M.P. Sattler, 2018) Whereas the law seems reasonable on the surface, it falls short because children with high needs often get mismatched with foster homes having parents undertrained or not trained to meet those needs. Additional risk factors for misplacement or disruptions include standards of care stemming from child abuse, neglect, physical punishment, and illegal contact with the birth parents. Neglect was the most common form of maltreatment from birth parents. (Wolanin, 2005) These disruptions are more common with children between five to nine years old, who remain with their siblings and live in kinship care. Kinship care is associated with an 18% higher risk of misplacement or disruptions based on standards of care. (Kierra M.P. Sattler, 2018)
Child-initiated disruptions lead to faster outcomes for congregate living, poor academic engagement, and subsequent inequity. Students of high-risk child-initiated disruptions are 2.5 – 3.5 times more likely to receive special education services and bound to restrictive educational settings where the education quality is poorer than their peers – even those receiving special education services. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022) The profile student of child-initiated disruptions is female adolescents, Hispanic, students whose caregiver was unable to provide childcare services, previous removal and placement, and caregiver having mental health or substance abuse issues. Nonrelative settings were most common. (Kierra M.P. Sattler, 2018)
It is interesting to note that most neglected and maltreated children live with relatives. They are less likely to have child-initiated disruptions. They seldom run away or have trouble with the law compared to students who live with nonrelatives. Coincidentally, Foster children living with nonrelatives are less likely to suffer neglect and maltreatment. However, both groups registered high in studies that measured persistence rates. The persistence measures are excellent advocates for the debate on holistic approaches to educational equity for foster care students. Here, the student’s resilience is measured, and the weakness of mainstream education is exposed. Research shows that foster care students were more likely to possess an attachment avoidance adaptation that negatively impacts the challenges of a college experience. (Watt & Faulkner, 2020) They are less likely to seek help from professors or resources like writing centers or librarians.
The persistence and resilience conversation naturally leads to the mentality of the foster care student once emancipated. An educational system must consider mental harm from physical, emotional, and psychological damage and the impacts on foster children’s persistence and resilience. In the fundamental forms, consider the emotional state of a child who testifies “I remember vividly just sitting outside the courthouse, my birth mother crying, and then suddenly, I was living somewhere else – in a house I didn’t know. No one told me anything. For five years, no one told me anything.” (Wolanin, 2005) One should consider to what extent mainstream education accounts for the emotional shock described above. The Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care noted that uncertainty from foster care over time would substantially increase the likelihood of emotional, behavioral, and academic challenges. (Wolanin, 2005)
The Impact of Supportive Infrastructure
There is supportive infrastructure for foster children, designed mainly by the legislature. Nonprofits have tried to fill in gaps. Transitions from congregate care to independence involve crash courses in independent living, education, and work preparation. However, research finds the quality of these programs wanting. Such findings suggest that congregate care works best when placements are medically necessary and therapeutic. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022) The Texas fee waiver program has shown moderate success, with data showing those who engage are 3.5 times more likely to graduate with a bachelor’s degree within six years of turning eighteen. (Watt & Faulkner, 2020) Nonprofit groups like Better Future make a case for a holistic approach using its Oregon study to show that students involved in that program had positive gains in post-secondary transition. The program promotes self-determination and post-secondary focus as it engages youth in a post-secondary immersion experience followed by nine months of support. There are other supportive nonprofit organizations like Persistence Plus in Connecticut, California College Pathways, and Fostering College Success Initiative in New York, to name a few.
Students who meet success are not only associated with low foster care living placement moves but remain with foster care parents until they are twenty-one years old. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022) They take advantage of tuition fee waivers; they attend college within the same year they graduate from high school and get involved with effective transition programs. The individualized programs involve foster youth in life skill experiences while providing substantial resources and long-term adult mentoring. (Wolanin, 2005) (Watt & Faulkner, 2020)
There is a vast difference between the characteristics of those who successfully transition having stability, purpose, and social capital compared to those whose roads lead the opposite direction. The difference may make a strong argument for a holistic approach that may prove beneficial if started early. Research shows benefits for those exposed to quality early interventions and early childhood education services. (Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, 2022) Research has identified common family stressors among foster youth associated with child abuse, neglect, depression, and personality disorders. Early interventions have shown to be effective influencers. (Trout, Hagaman, Casey, Reid, & Epstein, 2008) A holistic approach includes spirituality, human wholeness, community connection, principles of freedom and autonomy, individual uniqueness, caring relations, and democracy. (Rudge, 2008) It acknowledges that the educational achievement of vulnerable children is not a single-family or child issue but a school-level and systematic issue. The approach recognizes that collaboration between the education and child welfare systems creates educational equity. (National factsheet on the educational outcomes of children in foster care, 2018)
The more significant fail rate shadows the notable success of emancipated foster care students. For each post-secondary success, there are at least five failures. Despite the fee waiver for post-secondary education, 40% of eligible youth do not take advantage of it. (Watt & Faulkner, 2020) National data revealed that fewer than 10% of all foster youth would enroll in a four-year college, and 4% would complete it. (Kalah, Elizabeth, Siobhan, Qi, & Kristin, 2020) The numbers haven’t changed over nearly two decades. Foster youth attend post-secondary education at a 20% lower rate than their peers (60%). The frequency at which foster youth completed high school was 50% below their peers (70%). (Wolanin, 2005) Almost fifteen after Wolanin reported those numbers, Toni Terling Watt, Kim Seoyourn, and Kaytlin Garrison documented their study, which supported Wolanin’s data suggesting that 20% of foster care children will attend post-secondary education. 32.2% of their sample respondents reported enrollment in higher education, falling near what other studies show between 20% and 30%.
In their study to measure the efficacy of Texas waiver programs, their collected data revealed that 35.87% of youth who experienced foster care enrolled in higher education within six years after turning eighteen years old. 47.35% were eligible for tuition waivers, and 60% took advantage of the program. Of those, 2.21% achieved post-secondary credentials by twenty-four. 1% obtained a bachelor’s degree (consistent with more extensive studies). 13.5% enrolled straight from high school, and 17% received a degree or certificate by twenty-four years old. They used a chi-square test to identify the factors associated with waiver utilization for those eligible for the waiver. Their findings were that few differences existed among those who did not use the waiver. Those who enrolled in four-year colleges were more likely to use the waiver, but no significant difference was found in waiver utilization by gender, race, ethnicity, the timing of enrollment, or college G.P.A. (Watt, Seoyoun, & Garrison, 2019)
Watt’s earlier study revealed that states with tuition waivers and collaboratives (documented organized efforts to promote post-secondary education) had doubled the odds of higher education enrollment over states that only gave tuition waivers. (Watt, Seoyoun, & Garrison, 2019) These two results support the idea that infrastructural design to promote educational equity is only as good as its users. Somewhere the system is broken, and disconnections exist between the legislature, the products, the implementation of programs, and those who are the intended beneficiaries.
Missing Links and Gaps
Wolanin, 2005, suggests that we may find the gaps in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which haphazardly carries out evaluations on the Chafee program effectiveness, test distribution effectiveness, and the dissemination of evaluation results. In addition, he suggests there are no mechanisms in place to encourage states to use the Chafee program funds for the most effective practices. Wolanin also draws attention to caseworkers responsible for creating case plans that provide placement, reunite youth with parents and serve the youth’s best interest. He suggests the gap lies within those caseworkers’ due diligence in executing court decisions, visiting children on their cases, and enduring the low pay, heavy workloads, and stress that eventually chase them away. The absent caseworker, according to Wolanin, throws another log into the fire of foster children’s infernal distrust and relationship disruptions.
There is more optimism regarding Chafee in the literature that post-dates Wolanin. Since his findings, Chafee foster care Independence Program requires the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to track services and outcomes. This requirement aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the additional support for emancipated foster youth. (Watt, Seoyoun, & Garrison, 2019) As a result, the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD), established in 2010, submitted its first data set in 2011, including data on youth aging out of foster care in all fifty states. NYTD provides data to the Children’s Bureau and supports the collaboration of multiple foundations like Casey Family Programs, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Stuart Foundation. Since Wolanin, 2005, the National Working Group on Foster Care and Education has produced a national fact sheet. The fact sheet played a vital role in the growing body of research reflecting the educational needs of foster care students. (National factsheet on the educational outcomes of children in foster care, 2018)
The holistic approach does not have a prototype. More research is needed to create sufficient models. However, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, we may find a roadmap for creating a data-sharing program. The program links their school system, the Department of Human Services, and child welfare staff to access the educational records of foster youth. The possibility of sharing students’ documents may have academic success, social and psychological development outcomes, interventions, and displacement history may benefit all stakeholders and fix the disconnection between legislative support and system utilization.
I was a foster child. I was adapted when I was 10 years old. I experienced many things you talked about in this blog. Although I was lucky, many are not. Thanks for caring.