Disappearing Act: Keeping an eye on foster kids in our schools 

It’s easy for a story about foster children to get emotional. Their stories are often heartbreaking accounts of criminal neglect and sexual, physical or emotional abuse. For about 40,000 California children each year, conditions at home are bad enough that they must be taken away from their parents and into the custody of the foster care system. One in four stays in the system more than three and a half years, typically moving several times. California is playing surrogate parent to more than 100,000 such youth on any given day — and that number could grow by almost 70 percent by 2005.

Tragically, because of frequent moves and delays caused by legal procedures, students in foster care often fall behind in school, which lessens their life chances. Research bears out these shocking statistics concerning foster youth who “age out” of the system:

• One in three fails to complete high school
• One-fourth experience homelessness
• One-half are unemployed
• One in four spends time in jail
• A third go on welfare

Listen to some of their stories, and it seems almost frivolous to be concerned about their education: A 7-year-old whose stomach is in knots because he blames himself for making daddy go away; a middle-schooler preoccupied with the knowledge that she will soon be moved to yet another foster home, away from her little sister; a 17-year-old weighed with the very adult responsibility of earning his own way, forced from his support systems before graduation.

Academically, foster children generally perform well below average for their age group. Homework is easily forgotten in the tumult of parental visits, court appearances, and doctor’s appointments. Emotional disturbances commonly play out in poor classroom behavior. Yet, getting a good education may be the only way most foster children can make a better life for themselves.

What causes such poor outcomes for children in foster care? Does the problem lie with their living situation, with the school, or both? Who is accountable for making sure foster children make educational progress?

Contributing factors

Foster children have special needs not shared by other children who come from otherwise similar ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Those who have been abused often develop emotional disturbances, which many times lead to behavioral problems or learning disabilities. Many have frequent medical and mental health appointments that take them out of school. In one study of California foster children, two-thirds of the children had special needs, with half of those experiencing emotional problems.

Getting the child enrolled in school can also be problematic, since immunization and academic records are often not forwarded immediately to the new school. It’s not uncommon for a child to miss several weeks of school between foster home placements. Multiply that by three, four, or five moves, and it becomes almost inevitable that the child will fall behind academically. One educator questioned in a 2001 survey by the Bay Area Social Services Consortium recognized the disconnect between the goals of schools and those of the child welfare system: “The [child welfare] system is totally devoted to safety, and education is not even part of the equation.”

Carrie Bloxom, who supervises the Foster Youth Services program for Kern County Office of Education, says that moving from home to home takes a unique toll on foster youth.

“The moving can cause emotional disturbances which, in turn, cause the kids to act out in school,” she says. “Just probably a feeling of loneliness – a constant break in relationships, even the change in social workers when they move from various homes. Some of the kids have mental health issues, and if those aren’t addressed on a consistent basis, or if they get moved quite a bit and aren’t getting their medications in an appropriate amount of time, that can have a big effect on their schooling.”

Older children who have lost heart at the constant struggle to catch up academically may start cutting class. Some act up in class in a desperate bid for approval from their peers. Many suffer with undiagnosed learning disabilities. Ironically, though foster children’s special needs may go unfulfilled, behavioral problems usually get swift attention. A study by American Institutes for Research found that many foster youth attend court and community schools, where the “amount and degree of rigor of instruction … is reportedly often significantly less than that in regular public schools, making transition back to regular public schools difficult.”

Kern County’s Bloxom acknowledged that once foster youth are placed in alternative schools, they often stay there. “The intent is to get them back into the local school district. But a lot of them have been there a long time. It depends on their behavior. Before they come to us, they’ve moved from school to school to school to school. We’re the last stop. I mean, they can’t read; playing catch-up at 17 years old is a big task.”

As high school students transfer from school to school, credits for work completed during partial semesters is usually lost, and the student must start all over again at the new school. Losing credits for partial work completed often leaves the student credit-deficient – another reason that many drop out.

Accountability

What many foster youth need is personal attention, but the available state and federal programs don’t receive enough funding to serve everyone. “We do the best we can,” says Bloxom, “but the tutors and mentors we have are spread pretty thin. The kids need them right now, and I have none. Just for that program, I would say 60-70 percent aren’t getting it.”

Foster children can also have problems accessing special education services, several studies found. A child may not stay in one school long enough for someone to notice that he or she needs to be evaluated. There is even evidence to suggest that some schools hesitate to test children or enroll those that need special education services because of the extra cost to the district – money that should go to serve the district’s “own” children.

Lisa Davis is the clinical director of the school-based day treatment program for a Santa Clara-based non-profit, EMQ (formerly known as Eastfield Ming Quong). Their intensive special education services are a last step before more restrictive non-public school options. “The partners that we have in delivering our services are being as proactive as they possibly can given the limited resources that they have to meet these kids’ needs. I think that what happens is there is a little ping-ponging, so to speak, about whose responsibility it is when a child goes into a district, particularly if they’re a foster care child.”

The issue of accountability for the educational outcomes of foster children remains unresolved. While a number of state and local agencies touch the lives of foster children, no centralized authority exists solely to oversee their education. Most entities that have studied the issue recommend that the lines of responsibility be clarified and that oversight and monitoring of education services be improved.

“I think the Department of Family and Child Services, which is out of the Department of Social Services, the County Office of Education and the districts feel a mutual accountability for educating those kids,” says Craig Wolfe, division director for EMQ services in Santa Clara County. “But there is also a lack of resources, and I think it’s important to separate that out from the accountability issue. There are just not enough resources to go around, or enough people to track all the kids that are in foster care.”

Invisible population

The identities of foster youth are often a closely-guarded secret at a school site. For the most part, foster youth wish to preserve their privacy and are discriminating about who they tell. Sometimes, through the enrollment process, a student’s foster care status comes to the attention of the principal or counselor, who may pass that information along to the child’s teacher. District policies vary.

Yet, some districts have found it to be helpful to inform school staff of foster youth enrolled at their campus.

“If you’re dealing with a child that is being shuffled from placement to placement,” says Alvin Henry, director of foster youth services at Sacramento City Unified School District, “and you’re trying to figure out a particular behavior that this child is exhibiting, it’s good to understand that he might be dealing with issues of isolation, he might be dealing with issues of abuse, he might be dealing with issues of identity.”

Staff should weigh the child’s behavior against the fact that they live in extraordinary circumstances, Henry says. “You can’t treat them as if they’re a regular child in the general population. They need to take that into consideration in terms of how they’re disciplining.”

Sacramento was one of the first districts in the state to offer advocacy, tutoring and other programs to help foster children succeed. The district has offered the state’s Core Foster Youth Service programs since 1973. There are six Core projects statewide, along with Countywide Foster Youth Service programs in 45 county offices of education which specifically serve children in group homes.

There are a variety of support systems for foster youth provided by the federal and state governments, along with local collaboratives. But for the most part, these systems of care are dispensed sporadically. Limited funding makes it impossible to ensure that all foster youth receive the tutoring, therapy, skills training and living assistance offered by government programs. Some cities or counties have established programs that link schools with community organizations; the few that exist typically serve just a fraction of the eligible foster youth in their jurisdiction.

To help ensure that foster youth receive the services they need, the AIR report – authorized by the Legislature in 2000 – recommended that each school district hire an educational liaison to meet with each foster child and create an education plan, and then monitor that plan.

Legislative efforts

Some common themes appear in the recommendations of most studies of foster care: improve the transfer of school records when children move, make sure those who need special services get them, clearly identify those responsible for the educational progress of foster children, limit school mobility, increase continuity in the lives of foster children, adequately prepare teens for emancipation and encourage collaboration with other agencies.

Several of those recommendations are addressed in legislation recently signed by the governor. Assembly Bill 490, by Assembly Member Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, gives foster youth the right to remain at the same school if they must move mid-year. The bill also authorizes schools to enroll foster children immediately, even without immunization records. Students will also be able to receive credit for partial coursework and schools must accept credits earned at other schools.

Overall, the bill seeks to ensure that foster youth are afforded the same educational opportunities as all other children.

“While a good education is critical to every child’s successful transition to adulthood,” argues Steinberg in an analysis of the bill, “it is especially true for children who spend long periods of their childhood in foster care. The lack of educational stability is thought to be the single biggest hurdle to educational achievement for foster youth.”

Without proper intervention and support, foster children often become society’s throw-aways. The lack of clear accountability for their outcomes means many fall through every crack in the system.

“I think most of them have unrealistic expectations about what’s going to happen,” says Kern County’s Bloxom. “I think they all think they can fall back on welfare and government assistance, so the need to try harder doesn’t really seem that important. … For the most part, they’re dreamers, but it’s the wrong kind of dreaming. And a lot of them end up pregnant, because that’s another way, another option.”

CSU Dominguez Hills student Porschia Meyers stands as testament to the effectiveness of programs to shore up the lives of foster kids. Coming from a background of abuse, a caring social worker and a district mentoring program run in partnership with a community non-profit helped her set a goal of becoming a social worker herself.

“People have all these myths and stereotypes about foster kids,” says Meyers. “You’re looked at as being dirty and poor and a lot of people assume that you’re stupid because you are in foster care.”

The mentoring program at a Los Angeles high school helped her find options when a bus strike threatened to end her college career. She stuck it out, and the staff of the program presented her with an award for her determination.

“It was a beautiful award, and it was that pat on the back,” she says. “Children in general need it, but I think foster kids need it more, because they usually don’t have anybody. So that extra pat on the back, ‘you’re doing a good job’ – it really means a lot.”

Kristi Garrett is associate editor of California Schools.