The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning is a public, not-for-profit organization dedicated to strengthening teacher development policy and practice. Our Web site features recent information on teacher development including research, state and national policy and legislative initiatives, and models for effective practice. We invite policy-makers, parents and teachers, researchers and journalists, and education and philanthropic organizations to use the resources of this site and join us in helping to ensure that every child learns from a fully qualified and effective teacher.

Margaret Gaston President & Executive Director

Message from the President

Changing Systems to Give California’s Foster Children the Opportunity To Succeed

In a recent message to California’s citizens, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell observed that “closing the achievement gap helps improve the lives and futures of all California students, not just those furthest behind.  It also promotes the skilled workforce that the state needs to compete and thrive in the global economy.” 

We agree.  For over a decade, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning has been looking closely at the ways in which schooling – and especially teaching – for economically disadvantaged children of color can be improved to yield just the kind of outcome Superintendent O’Connell advocates.   

Within this group of children, to which the Center has paid so much attention, there is a hidden cohort: those in the foster care system.  Of the half million American children who are placed in the foster care system, at least 74,000 live in California.  

The public’s relationship to these children is unique because as they are removed from their homes for reasons of maltreatment or neglect, the state steps into the role of in loco parentis.  In effect, during the time these children are in foster care we, as California citizens, become their parents.  And our success rate with those in our care is abysmal: half of the children in foster care have been held back at least one grade, 25-52% are placed in special education (compared to 10-12% of the general student population), 46% do not complete high school, and fewer than 3% go on to a four-year college.

In a new report, Ready to Succeed, released by the California Education Collaborative for Children in Foster Care (a collaboration between the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning and Mental Health Advocacy Services, Inc.,), the authors note that "Year after year, we accept educational outcomes that few parents would tolerate for their own children."  The report’s authors go on to say that "The educational neglect this dismal record represents is particularly tragic because educational success could, for many foster children, improve not only their transitions to self-sufficiency and adulthood, but their overall well-being during and after their school years…The case for devoting attention and resources to closing their educational achievement gap is both morally and practically compelling.”

In focusing on the connections among the foster care, social services and education systems, Ready to Succeed captures what the Collaborative has identified as the most significant barriers to educational success:

• Children entering foster care often have already experienced significant emotional or physical trauma or maltreatment that harms their ability to function in a classroom setting and interferes with their ability to learn.  Most children entering the foster care system are already a year behind their peers in school.
• Frequent changes in foster care placements often mean transferring to a new school, leading to a bewildering array of teachers, administrators, classmates and routines. The problem is magnified because school records typically do not follow students in a timely manner and when records do arrive, they are often incomplete.
• Too often, there is no single person with an interest in a foster child’s educational outcomes, nor the authority and accountability to provide guidance when necessary.
• Child welfare advocates, educators and other service providers do not and sometimes cannot share information about foster children for whom they are responsible, making it more difficult to coordinate a child’s education and education-related interventions.

We believe Ready to Succeed puts forward a compelling case for moving the status of foster care children into view, making public their educational status as well as the state’s progress toward ensuring that they have the opportunities due them to succeed in school.  We urge the policy community to focus on the aspects of the lives of children in foster care that most undermine educational outcomes and for which there is remedy within our control.  First among these is the disruption in their education that is caused by constant changes in placements.  Beyond stabilizing school placement, there are other elements within the public school system that can be addressed, including early and ongoing assessments of students’ strengths and challenges; interventions (both in the classroom and out of school) that are backed by reliable research to support their efficacy with at-risk students in the general population; and teacher and student supports that lead to improved educational outcomes.

As noted in the full report, many individuals and organizations participated in the meetings and background work that culminated in the report's publication.  We are especially grateful to WestEd for their literature review leading to the recommendations developed through this process, and to the team at Mental Health Advocacy Services, Inc., for lending to this effort their expertise in foster care, child welfare, and the courts.

Margaret Gaston
President & Executive Director

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