Advocates for children in foster care had good reason to cheer the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act two years ago. The new law requires schools to break out student achievement data for foster care students so that the public can see how they are doing relative to their peers.
And it calls for (a term the law did not define) even if it鈥檚 no longer their neighborhood school. The state must work with school districts and local child welfare agencies to provide transportation. The transportation was supposed to be in place one year after the passage of ESSA.
So how are state agencies doing with that transportation requirement?
The national news site, which covers child welfare, surveyed all 50 states, beginning in November of last year. Forty-four responded to its request. Of those, 33 said they were working with local school districts to comply with the law.
But it鈥檚 less clear to the Chronicle that other states have implemented ESSA鈥檚 requirements, including Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Responses from Alaska, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, and New York suggest that school districts have tried to comply with the law, but the state agencies could not 鈥渄efinitively confirm鈥� that they had.
The Chronicle says that 162,000 foster children, about 37 percent of those in foster care nationally, are living in states where compliance is in question.
鈥淥ur findings suggest that thousands of foster youth are being denied their educational rights,鈥� said Daniel Heimpel, the publisher of The Chronicle. 鈥淢y question is why hasn鈥檛 the federal Department of Education or Congress stepped up to make sure that the Every Student Succeeds Act鈥檚 foster care provisions are being enforced? It makes one wonder about the federal government鈥檚 power or willingness to serve extremely vulnerable children.鈥�
When ESSA passed, some advocates for school districts worried that they would not have the resources to meet the mandate. And they noted that the language in ESSA is murky as to whether school districts or local health departments were ultimately on the hook for covering transportation costs. .