Schooling Issue a Complication for Foster Care

Policymakers from Congress to the state and local levels are sharpening their focus on the educational needs of children in foster care, a population that can exceed 700,000 nationally in the course of a year and which has doubled in the past two decades.

In many cases, their strategies coincide with recommendations outlined in a recent report on California’s massive foster-care system: access to preschool for foster children, specialized training for teachers, and making sure child-welfare agencies have educational liaisons.

“A focus on school readiness and school success may not heal all the damage already inflicted early in the lives of foster children, but it can give these children—and many of their peers—the fighting chance they need and deserve to thrive as adults,” says the report , released last month by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning in Santa Cruz, Calif., and Mental Health Advocacy Services Inc., a Los...