In Arizona, as in many other parts of the United States, school stability for foster youth is a significant problem. Forty-two percent of students in foster care switched schools during the school year, according to a 2015 West Ed report, and research has shown that each change costs a student at least three months of academic progress.
These frequent moves jeopardize the already dim academic prospects for foster youth in a state that is struggling to provide quality education to students in general.
A major federal law passed in 2015, called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), required states to solve the mobility problem for foster youth by December of 2016. It mandated child welfare and education departments work together to pay for transportation to a foster youth’s “school of origin,” defined as the school the student attended at the time they entered foster care.
[For more on this story by Christie Renick, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...outh-education/30345]
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