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10/17/2022
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Op-Ed: With our foster kids still falling behind, the time for action is now
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By Rep. Julie A. Casimiro
While COVID-19 severely disrupted all of our students’ educations, there is a very specific group of kids in our state who were already significantly behind on most, if not all, educational success metrics.
I am referring to Rhode Island’s children in state care and the truly heartbreaking gap in their educational experiences and outcomes when compared to their peers. Many of these children have already experienced a lifetime of trauma and if the data is accurate, we as a state are not properly supporting them in school in order to better their already stressed and difficult lives.
During the 2021 legislative session, I sponsored a bill that directed superintendents to create an annual report on the academic progress of foster care youth. Well, the first report is in and frankly, we should be ashamed of the results.
Our children in foster care are significantly lagging behind other children in every important metric. Subject proficiency, absenteeism, infraction and graduation rates all show that our kids in foster care are not receiving the educations that they deserve. For instance, chronic absenteeism affects 43 percent of Rhode Island’s students, yet for foster kids, the percentage balloons to 92 percent before entering foster care and 85 percent after entering foster care.
In regard to behavioral infractions, 23 percent of state-wide students have experienced infractions while 61 percent of foster kids were linked to behavioral issues even after entering foster care. Similarly, foster kids were half as likely to be proficient in math and reading as their fellow students and graduation rates for children in foster care trailed behind other students by almost 30 percentage points.
Combine these troubling numbers with the learning losses associated with the pandemic, and Rhode Island’s children in foster care are suffering with severe educational disadvantages.
Simply put, we are failing the students of Rhode Island who need the most support as they try to overcome their traumatic upbringings.
We need to do better.
This data should serve as a wakeup call to our school districts and departments. Remediation plans should have been filed long ago. These children have not asked for the hand they have been dealt and through no fault of their own, the safety nets in place to ensure their educational success are not working.
In particular, six of our districts have shown truly abysmal results and the failure to properly educate and support our foster kids is unacceptable. Every day without corrective action is a day of learning these children will never get back, possibly hampering them for years to come. Excuses should no longer be tolerated and our foster kids should not be suffering due to the failures of the adults in charge of their educations.
Too much time has already been wasted and too many foster children have already left school without the education they need and deserve. We owe these children the best possible opportunities to succeed later in life and this is not possible if they are academically failing.
The time to act is now and I will continue to advocate for our foster kids so they know we have not forgotten them. I urge you to do the same.
Rep. Julie A. Casimiro, a Democrat, represents District 31 in North Kingstown and Exeter. The report can be found at https://datasparkri.org/foster-care-youth.
For more information, contact:
Andrew Caruolo, Publicist
State House Room 20
Providence, RI 02903
(401)222-6124
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