The footage from the Sept. 23rd press conference on educational stability for foster youth including Sen. Grassley, Rep. McDermott, and Rep. Bachmann, with ‘DC Real Housewife’ Stacie Scott Turner and former foster youth is available at:
Click here to visit our recent post featuring pictures and the press release.
Click here for footage of the event.
***PRESS RELEASE***
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 23, 2010
CONTACT: Daniel Heimpel, 510.334.8636/dheimpel@fosteringmediaconnections.org or Emily Collins, 202.544.8500/ Emily@ccainstitute.org
Back to School, Back to Instability: New Study Shows Foster Children Struggle in Math, English and Other Standardized Tests
Bipartisan Group of Hill Leaders and DC ‘Real Housewife’ Stacie Scott Turner Call for Change, Equal Opportunity
WASHINGTON, DC — As families engage in familiar back-to-school rituals, early new data shows that the educational playing field is not level for children in foster care, whose academic careers are often impacted by multiple school relocations. Foster youth persistently score lower than their peers in all educational measures. The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) and Fostering Media Connections (FMC) today released preliminary findings from a pilot program conducted by the California Partnership for Achieving Student Success (Cal-PASS) which indicate that foster youth in four counties in California are less likely than their closely matched peers and the general student population to achieve proficiency in English and math at all grade levels.
Sample preliminary results found that one in 10 foster youth are proficient in math by the 11th grade; just over two in 10 foster youth will be proficient in English by the 11th grade. The full findings of the Cal-PASS pilot project will be released this winter. In reviewing the preliminary results of this study and others like it, Senators Mary Landrieu and Chuck Grassley, Representatives Jim McDermott and Michele Bachmann, and former foster child turned reality TV personality Stacie Scott Turner called on Governors, their fellow Members of Congress and the Administration to take immediate action to reverse this disturbing trend.
The compelling testimony of two former youth helped to put a face on the reality the numbers represent. Sokhom Mao was placed in a stable environment, protected by a 2004 California law that requires that youth in care have the chance to stay in the same school despite a change in placement. “While in foster care, it was very important to not change schools while I was changing placements. That stability allowed me to graduate from high school successfully and helped me retain my entire high school course curriculum. That landed me in San Francisco State University, where I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Criminal Justice.” Conversely, Christina Miranda told of attending 10 different schools, four different schools in high school alone. “I remember moving a lot and that was pretty painful. I had the realization that I wasn’t a normal student with a normal life. I remember feeling like there was no reason to try because I knew I was going to leave anyway.”
Former foster child and star of Bravo’s Real Housewives of DC Stacie Scott Turner shared her story and those of the children she counsels through Extra-Ordinary Life, a program for girls in foster care. “Many people don’t understand what foster children face: an unstable home, lack of parental influence and moving from place to place makes focusing on school five times as difficult. When we can ensure foster children are supported and nurtured and can focus on education we will start to see results and level the playing field between them and a general population that often takes their stability and education for granted.”
“While lower educational outcomes always signal a need for reform, what makes these numbers even more disturbing is we know they do not accurately reflect these youth’s academic potential,” said Kathleen Strottman, Executive Director of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. “The fact that they can perform at all, in light of the constant changes in school and other trauma in their lives, is alone a testament to their ability.”
On average, foster children move to new foster homes and into new schools one to two times per year,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), co-chair of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption and Senate Caucus on Foster Youth. “I have met youth who have attended over 10 high schools in four years. Research has shown each move can set students back as many as six months academically, and leads to increased dropout rates. Fortunately, this is a problem that has a solution. Building upon the Fostering Connections to Success Act, which calls for an increased focus on school stability, Congressional advocates of foster youth have drafted several pieces of legislation mandating that state and local education agencies work in coordination with child welfare agencies to eliminate enrollment delays and difficulties in transferring course credits. Senator Franken’s Fostering Success in Education Act, in particular, is a great example of legislation that would ensure that both education and child welfare entities take responsibility for the educational outcomes of youth in care.”
“One of the primary goals of the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth is to get these kids involved in shaping the policy that affects them. We’ve heard firsthand from foster youth how hard it is to stay in the same school. A foster youth might get a new placement that’s a few miles from his current school, yet have to switch schools because of school district rules. New schools don’t always accept paperwork from the old school. Congress needs to look at whatever can be done to ease the burden on these kids and help them make healthy, lasting connections. And we’ll continue to hear from the kids themselves as we move forward on policy,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
“For children who have been separated from their families and brought into foster care, the need for stability is critical. Teachers, coaches, and classmates can provide comfort and a sense of continuity for foster care youth, making it imperative that every effort is made to keep these children in their school of origin. The upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is an opportunity to make educational stability a reality by ensuring federal education law includes the parallel protections to the child welfare protections enacted in Fostering Connections,” said Congressman Jim McDermott, (D-Wash.), sponsor of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act.
“As a foster parent of 23 children, I understand the unique challenges foster children face. Many of them have endured difficult situations and face uncertainty at every turn. Stability can be found for these children through a daily routine, friends at school, and teachers who are familiar with their individual needs. That’s why I introduced the bipartisan School Choice for Foster Kids Act which would allow foster parents to send any foster child to his or her original school through education vouchers from the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program. Our nation’s foster children must be given an opportunity to succeed in spite of the hardships they experience,” said Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).
“I hope the Cal-PASS study will help us stay focused on the need for education and child welfare systems to work side by side to improve educational outcomes for children in foster care. Together we can ensure that hundreds of thousands of children in foster care have the same opportunity for a stable, secure education as their classmates and friends,” said Molly McGrath
The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (www.ccainstitute.org) is a non-governmental, non-profit organization that strives to be an objective, educational resource for information critical to advancing the efforts of federal policymakers on behalf of children in need of homes. CCAI is available on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ccainstitute), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ccainstitute), YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/ccainstitute), and our blog (https://ccainstitute.wordpress.com/).
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***MEDIA ADVISORY***
Back to School, Back to Instability: New Study Shows Foster Children Struggle in Math, English and other standardized tests
Bipartisan Hill Leaders and DC ‘Real Housewife’ Stacie Scott Turner Call for Change, Equal Opportunity
Washington, DC— As millions of hopeful children engage in familiar back-to-school rituals, early new data shows that the educational playing field is not level for children in foster care, whose academic careers are often impacted by multiple school relocations. Foster youth persistently score lower than their peers in all educational measures. The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute and Fostering Media Connections will release new data that supports their call to action at a press conference on Thursday, September 23rd from 12:00—1:00PM in Washington, D.C. at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, room SVC 215.
WHO:
WHAT:
As children head back to school, this event will identify the factors that impact educational outcomes for youth in foster care, and ways the federal government might act to address them.
WHEN:
Thursday Sept. 23, 2010 from 12:00PM—1:00PM
WHERE:
U.S. Capitol Visitor Center SVC 215
CONTACT:
For more information about the event, please contact Daniel Heimpel with Fostering Media Connections at 510.334.8636, or dheimpel@fosteringmediaconnections.org.
The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (www.ccainstitute.org) is a non-governmental, non-profit organization that strives to be an objective, educational resource for information critical to advancing the efforts of federal policymakers on behalf of children in need of homes. Please follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ccainstitute), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ccainstitute), YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/ccainstitute), and our blog (https://ccainstitute.wordpress.com/).
# # #
Just the other week, the Children’s Bureau released new AFCARS data. The below chart taken from their website shows the data trends from FY2002- FY2009.
I was looking over the data with my colleague, and being a numbers guy (our finance director to be exact) David and I decided to look a little closer at the numbers. We noticed two significant trends:
1) Why are so many more children being adopted out of foster care than ever before?
Between 2002-2009, the number of children waiting to be adopted decreased from 134,000 to 115,000. However, the number of children adopted with public child welfare agency involvement actually increased from 51,000 to 57,000 over the same time period.
This represents a substantial increase in the percentage of children waiting to be adopted who were actually adopted. In 2002, only 34% of waiting children were adopted but by 2009 that had increased to over 49% of waiting children who were adopted. The AFCARS data also shows that the percentage of children in care whose parental rights have been terminated and were then adopted increased from 68% to 81% between 2002 and 2009.
The problem is that no real answer exists for this question. Several factors may be influencing this decrease in the number of waiting children and the spike in adoptions out of foster care:
2) Why are there so many less children in foster care now?
Between 2002-2009, the number of children in foster care decreased by almost 100,000 from 523,000 to 424,000. The number of children entering care has decreased by as little as 7% or as much as 17% each year. This is due in part to increasing programs and funding to assist families and keep children out of the system.
In an Associated Press article examining this topic, Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform shares, “Now, finally, it’s sinking in that most cases labeled ‘neglect’ — the single largest category of maltreatment — are really poverty, and it makes more sense to try to deal with the poverty than destroy the family.”
Stephanie Wang-Breal, the filmmaker behind POV’s adoption documentary, Wo Ai Ni (I love you) Mommy that premiered last night on PBS, has taken her new knowledge of adoption and become an advocate for the world’s orphans. In the weeks leading up to the premier of Wo Ai Ni (I love you) Mommy, Stephanie began posting adoption and foster care trivia on her facebook page to see what the general public’s understanding of these issues really is. The responses to one of her posts was upsetting, in the least.
Stephanie posted, “FACT: 123,000 children and youth in foster care are available for adoption because parental rights have been terminated; however, only 55,000 children are adopted each year.”
Below are the responses that 2 readers posted:
“We would have been happy to adopt domestically [from foster care], but I got the cold shoulder from everyone I ever contacted about it, and a few in the field even went so far as to talk us out of it. Why? They really need to work out a new system, and soon!!! It’s just not working the way it is now.”
“We were also talked out of it! We were thinking of fostering to adopt and were told that rarely happens. Almost gave up with adoption until we ran into a friend that had adopted from China.”
The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, based on the findings from their 2007 Adoption Attitudes Survey, recommends that “adoption agencies and practitioners need to be informed about the critical nature of responding to initial contact from those interested in adopting and supporting their efforts to drive accountable, results-driven quality customer service, from initial phone call to post-adoption support.”
But why is there such a difference in how prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) are treated in foster care adoption versus international adoption?
The National Child Welfare Resource Center for Adoption published an article last year that argues the difference is simple: customer service. Public workers lack the customer service that private adoption agencies who provide international adoption services have. In foster care adoption, the client being served is the child who lacks the power and voice to advocate. However, in international adoption the client is the PAP, who comes with a determination to adopt a child, ability to advocate and involve other powerful individuals in the process, and the funding to finance the entire process.
This raises the question, what can we do to encourage policy makers to address this problem? If customer service was improved for foster care adoption, would we see an increase in the number of adoptions out of foster care, and ultimately less of our country’s children waiting in foster care for a family?
In the early month April, I was preparing for my summer internship in Washington, DC. As I boarded the airplane on May 29th leaving Clearwater, Florida, I remembered saying, “this is just the beginning of a new life.” I had just graduated with my Bachelor’s and was ready to start my career fighting for foster youth in our nation’s capital.
During my first week in Washington, I thought it would be hard to adjust with no family or friends around. However, as the days went on, I realized that it was time for me to go after my dreams and truly learn through this experience. I spent the summer interning with the Senate Finance Committee and being a part of the policy world.
As the end of my internship neared, I was faced with a tough decision of staying in DC to pursue my dream, or returning home to my siblings and friends and the only life I only ever knew. I decided this was my chance to make something happen for myself, and I approach my supervisors expressing my interest to stay in the position longer.
I’m excited to report that for three weeks now I have been working as a “Deputy Intern Coordinator Assistant”. I could not be where I am today without the experience I had this summer as a FYI Intern. I was forced out of my comfort zone and have conquered many fears that ultimately led me to reach this goal I had set of obtaining a permanent job in DC.
Fellow 2010 FYI Interns, you guys encouraged me to be steadfast in my dreams and not let anything get in my path! There were days, many of you made me laugh, but most importantly, you all showed your love and passion to make a difference within the child welfare system. Together, we can make a change and provide hope to the thousands of children in foster care. Just remember, no matter where you are, or what you’re going through, we are family and family stick together.
CCAI, thank you for believing in us and opening our eyes to the world of endless opportunities made available! Five years ago, I would have thought I was dreaming! But, because of you, I have been exposed to a new world of opportunities, new life journey and a forever family. Because of your endless dedication, I have been given an adopted family (always dreamed of), through Carri. Thank you so much. This allowed me to see how God works and realize those who surround me, truly care and want to see me proposer. Because 5 years from now- you will know you had a part of my success!
-Nicole Marchman, 2010 Foster Youth Intern
Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute 