NY: In New York, More Data Needed to Help Students in Foster Care, Experts Say
Imprint – October 24, 2023
For New Yorker Anthony Robinson, certain experiences stand out about attending school while in foster care, beginning at age 10 – illustrating how he felt unseen and unsupported. Among them is being put in classes a grade level behind where he had been previously and quickly becoming bored. That led to the desire to just cut out. “If I felt like the material wasn’t significant, or I knew it, I would just leave,” said Robinson, now 27 and a coordinator of educational and vocational resources for a foster care nonprofit serving New York City foster youth. He said his peers shared numerous challenges common to life in the child welfare system: seemingly ever-shifting schools and caregivers, traveling long distances from far-off foster homes and trying to stay focused when family connections feel scary and tenuous. Foster youth also experience higher rates of suspension, absenteeism and school instability, and lower math and test scores than their peers who live at home. “You can miss out on school if people aren’t checking up on you.” Advocates for foster youth like Robinson and child welfare scholars agree: Problems that aren’t measured and defined are difficult to fix. Yet while periodic reviews show foster youth struggle far more than their peers to succeed in school, consistent, specific and reliable data on their performance in school does not exist.
https://imprintnews.org/education/in-new-york-more-data-needed-to-help-students-in-foster-care-experts-say/245538