Fostering Educational Success
May 30, 2019
In this article, Molly Sarubbi explores how to build awareness and construct policy supports to help foster students succeed in education. “The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) outlines provisions that encourage more collaborative policy development and implementation that mitigate barriers for highly mobile individuals, such as foster youth and students experiencing homelessness,” she writes. Those who go through the foster care system have generally moved often and had to endure many academic transitions during childhood, which can drive down graduation rates for these students. ESSA “addresses those gaps by emphasizing the importance of limiting educational disruption by keeping children in their schools of origin when in their best interest.” Sarubbi notes that there are cases where implementing these ESSA provisions has been challenging “given the siloed nature of various entities supporting foster youth,” but despite “structural barriers, some states have brought key stakeholders together and strengthened supports for this population through legislative activity in 2019.”